


take these broken wings and learn to fly

by muppetstiefel



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - High School, Beverly Marsh & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Child Abuse, Did IT happen?? Is this completely AU?? Who Knows, Domestic Violence, F/M, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depersonalisation, References to Depression, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, This Is Sad, Underage Drinking, What Have I Done, implied PTSD, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2020-11-26 07:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20926760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: It was easy to believe it would last forever. When they rode their bikes to the quarry and threw them against the grass, tripping over themselves to explore, to see the world. Climbing that one tree that surpassed the rest in the clearing had been the defining moment for Stan; up there, you could see anything. The whole of Derry was spread out at their fingertips, itching at their palms.“I hope this never ends,” he had told Bill one night, sprawled out across the field, air rapidly cooling.Bill had confided back, whispered like a secret, dying seconds away into the night. “Yeah. Me neither.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Major TW;  
A very intense look at child abuse. Please be careful when reading. There is also alcohol abuse towards the end so please be careful!!
> 
> Title taken from Blackbird by The Beatles

It starts with the fall.

Summer had been blissful; nothing but long, hot days and cool nights sat around campfires or huddled on bedroom floors. The lack of school had been freeing, and the absence of any responsibility even more so. It had felt limitless, stretching out ceaselessly in front of them, day after day tumbling by without the looming prospect of study anywhere in the near future.

It was easy to believe it would last forever. When they rode their bikes to the quarry and threw them against the grass, tripping over themselves to explore, to see the world. Climbing that one tree that surpassed the rest in the clearing had been the defining moment for Stan; up there, you could see anything. The whole of Derry was spread out at their fingertips, itching at their palms.

“I hope this never ends,” he had told Bill one night, sprawled out across the field, air rapidly cooling.

Bill had confided back, whispered like a secret, dying seconds away into the night. “Yeah. Me neither.”

But evidently, summer had ended, and it had been replaced with fall, and school, and new shoes a size too big still.

Stan studies himself in the mirror, playing with the top button of his shirt. It’s odd, he thinks, how different a person can look between seasons. The slight downturn of his mouth, the tiredness of his eyes, mark the start of the new term.

He reaches down to grab his bag, straining at the weight of the straps already digging into his shoulder. Thank god for lockers and friends. They might just make the year bearable.

It starts with a shadow, spreading across the faded cream carpet.

His dad easily fills the doorway. He’s not a big man, not by any means, but he has this presence. This command that Stan has always assumed just came with his job. People listen to him. Stan listens to him. He respects his father, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem like a mutual thing.

Still, the intimidation seems bigger today. It has since summer ended. He hadn’t meant to hear the hushed, angry conversations about bills and affairs and his own prospects, but he had. Now he can’t get them out of his head as his father blocks his escape route.

“You got everything you need?” His voice is rough, like he’s just woken up, but the smartly pressed suit suggests different.

Stan just nods, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He tries, but he can’t quite meet his eye.

“Good,” his father affirms, though his tone suggests it’s far from good. “I want you to come home straight after school, alright? It’s going to start getting dark out sooner, and you will have lots of work to do.”

Stan wants to protest. Wants to insist that his curfew stays late, so he can still cycle to the quarry and watch Beverly and Richie put on little shows and swing his hands by his side so they brush against Bill’s.

But he doesn’t. Because his dad has enough to worry about, and because he will have lots of work to do, and he doesn’t want to be another problem.

So instead he just nods, swallowing the resistance in his throat.

His dad’s stance softens a little and he puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s firm, pushing him down and holding him in place. Stan finally meets his eyes and sees they’re not as tired as he expected. They’re dark, clouded and unreadable.

His voice is quiet at first, so quiet that Stan isn’t even sure he’s heard him right. Just a murmur, cold in his ear. “Don’t let me down like you always do, Stanley.”

* * *

It’s the beginning of the end.

Except, it’s not.

At first, things are pretty much the same. He still sees his friends – still sees Bill – and they still eat lunch together. He only feels a little sting at the end of the day as they cycle off on some adventure and he heads away, in the direction of Home.

But home is fine. His dad is always out, though whether it’s with his girlfriend or with his work, Stan doesn’t know. It leaves him alone with his mom, which is fine by him.

She’s quiet. She’s always be still, but now she’s practically silent. She does the housework as though a ghost, and she barely notices Stan. It feels as though he’s invisible, and sometimes it isn’t till the next morning that he’ll talk to someone again. The first form period with Ben in the seat next to him saves him from the nights of silence.

His school work is getting better. He’s always been good, but now it feels like all he does is study. He aces every test, excels on every homework. When he gets his grades back he always pins them on the fridge, hoping they’ll make his dad smile, or say “well done, Stanley,” or just anything.

He always ignores them.

Weekends are the same as they’ve always been. Saturdays are dominated by temple, but Sundays are free. They’re his. He’s allowed out if he’s home by five, so he’s up at eight in the morning and cycling round to Bill’s, or Richie’s, or whatever location is this week’s haunt of choice. They spend most of the day catching him up on what he’s missed, or showing him around their new den.

A few times one of them will stop short and look him over, as though to say ‘are you okay?’. He always ignores those looks.

They notice of course. His friends. When he first tells them about his new and improved curfew, Richie had flipped his shit. It was all “they can’t do this to you,” and “this is bullshit.” Ben and Eddie had agreed with him, and even Bill had muttered a disgruntled “Can’t you t-talk to them?” under his breathe. Mike had stayed silent on the matter, but as he left that night he had squeezed Stan’s arm extra tight.

Only Beverly said nothing. The look she gave him said it all. It was intense, knowing, and then it was gone.

It had scared Stan then, how much he had understood that look.

He’s still got Sundays and school lunches so he’s okay. He’s really okay.

He’s okay, even when his dad words won’t stop rattling inside his brain.

“Don’t let me down.”

“Like you always do.”

“Always.”

“Let me down.”

He spends so much time between four walls with just those words. After a month or so he starts to wonder if they’re true.

By October he is convinced they are the truest things anyone has ever said to him.

Truer than Bev’s words, when he pulls him in for a hug every day as they part ways at the fork in the road. “You’ll be missed, Stan.”

Truer than the way Eddie slides him his mars bar when he looks particularly glum at lunch.

Truer than Bill, and his eyes, and the way he tells Stan they all care about him.

How could they?

He always lets them down.

* * *

He misses Halloween for the first time since he was three. Maybe he deserves it.

He spends the night studying instead. Despite all the time doing nothing else, his grades have started to slip through his fingers like sand. First B’s and then C’s. He clings to the pass, tries to convince himself that Algebra is hard and his brain just isn’t wired like that. At least he’s passing Phis Ed, despite being unable to catch a ball or run without getting a stitch.

Anyone looks good next to Eddie and his constant sick notes, he reasons with himself.

Still, the dwindling grades scare him – his dad’s words scare him – so he stops sleeping. At first it’s to study, and then it’s because he just can’t sleep anymore. Not for more than two hours, anyway.

He falls asleep in European History, the one class he shares with both Richie and Mike. He’s woken up by a hand on his shoulder, the distance sound of chairs scraping in the background.

“Shit, Stan, and I thought I was the only one of us who went out partying during a school week,” Richie is saying, but he sounds far away.

Instead he focuses on Mike, and his soft eyes and the way he doesn’t prod when he asks, “are you okay?”

Stan nods. They forget about it.

* * *

They’re there when he gets his first F.

It’s algebra, because of course it is. He stares at the page, at the red marker for a long time, but it doesn’t truly sink in. It’s failure, plain and on the page. He’s proven his dad right. He is a let-down.

He’s waiting by the water fountain, because Bill has chemistry last thing and while Stan has to go home he has to see Bill first. He just has to. Sometimes he feels that the last glimpse of Bill is the only thing that gets him through the weekend.

His dad would call him a wuss. A coward. He’s starting to call himself that too.

He’s still staring at the glaring F when Bill finds him. He balls up the paper in his fist, but it’s too late – Bill’s mouth is set, and he’s definitely seen the look on Stan’s face. He feels his jaw clench and mouth tighten.

Bill looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Stan should be grateful he’s not probing his failure, but instead he feels some hopeless disappointment. Does he want Bill to know he’s a failure? Just to get some sympathy?

He’s really starting to see why his dad can’t stand him.

Outside Richie and Eddie are comparing test scores. It’s not algebra, but instead some forgotten subject they both elected to take. They’re so animated, not filled with this weight of expectant dread, and Stan would just leave if it wasn’t for Bill’s eyes, holding him in place.

“She’s gonna kill me,” Eddie is whining, gesturing erratically with the sheet. The curve of a C grade stings Stan’s eyes. “She’s actually going to kill me.”

Eddie’s mom won’t kill him. She’s not perfect, but she loves her son. A C isn’t going to change that.

Will an F change things with Stan’s dad? Would he kill him? His brain hesitates on that, so he pushes it from his mind.

“At least you didn’t flunk the course,” Richie has joined in. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, disposing of his test in the bin. “What kind of losers are we? The only clever one here is Stan.”

Richie gestures towards him, and he feels all eyes shift to him. He’s used to his friends looking at him, but not like this. He feels the failed test in his backpack pushing down, down, down.

There’s nothing but this white noise, ringing in his ears. For a second, he wonders if he’s actually underwater, sinking further down every second that bends around him.

That can’t be right, though, because he can see the outline of Richie’s glances, and he can hear each haggard and ragged breath that Eddie takes.

He clears his throat determinedly, but finds any words stick to the roof of his mouth. They’re all still watching him.

Bill hasn’t said anything. Not since lunch. He just keeps looking like that. Looking for the cracks. Waiting for Stan to fall apart.

Eddie swats Richie. Stan can hear the sound of palm meeting bare skin. It centres him, a little.

“Speak for yourself,” he’s saying, and Stan would find that comforting if the shorter boy didn’t talk so goddamn fast. “I’ve got a 3.5 GPA, dumbass, and it would be a lot higher if you hadn’t made me taking fucking classics-”

He swats at Richie again. This time he dodges it, colliding with Bill, who won’t stop looking at Stan, no matter how much he shuffles under the watchful gaze.

“Okay, so you’re clever and yeah, I guess Ben is clever too, but Stan-” he jumps at Richie’s arm snaking around his neck. It’s hot, and heavy, and his voice is so loud this close. “- Is our resident nerd.”

“We’re all nerds,” Stan mutters shakily, but no one hears him. He can barely hear himself over the blood rushing in his ears. All he can think about is his dad’s words and the crumpled test in his back pack and how fucking disappointed Bill looks right now, staring at him.

“Beep beep Richie,” it’s the first thing Bill has said since lunch. His words are soft, but they cut firmly through. Richie frowns, arm slipping defensively off Stan’s shoulder.

Eddie shoves him, a reprimand for his crimes; not that he knows what’s happened either. None of them know. None of them can know.

Except Bill does know, because his eyes are filled with something. Stan doesn’t know what it is. Concern? Disgust? Abject horror?

“I have to go,” He says quickly, as Richie opens his mouth to say something. His hands tighten around the straps of his bag as he takes a few clumsy steps backwards. He jerks his thumb in the direction of his bike, of his home, of the escape from this situation to one that will be far worse. “You know, curfew and all that.”

Richie and Eddie nod him off, but they look a little thrown. Richie makes some comment that Stan can’t hear, doesn’t want to hear, and then they’re bickering again, just as obnoxiously as before.

It’s just Bill, who keeps his eyes focused on him, unwavering. He can feel the pressure in the pit of his stomach, making him feel dizzier and dizzier.

“I’ll r-ride you home,” Bill is saying.

Before Stan can protest they’re hauling their bikes from the shed, pointing them in the direction of the Uris house.

They walk. It’s Bill’s suggestion, and whilst Stan can’t stop thinking about his curfew, he agrees. Anything to avoid the clean-cut silence of home, and the way his mom always keeps one eye on the door and no eyes on him.

But it’s okay, because the eyes on him now are Bill’s, and that look is gone. Instead it is replaced by a careful friendliness that reminds Stan of summer. Bill talks about school, and the clubhouse and their friends, and for a minute Stan can pretend the anecdotes include him too.

It’s nice, until it isn’t.

“It’s only one F, St-Stan,” Bill eyes are skirting, but his breath is even and his steps don’t falter. Stan mirrors him, left foot, then right foot, again and again until he feels like a normal human.

He just shrugs in response. Bill can’t know what this F will mean. Even Stan doesn’t know, not really. It could mean home by three, even on Sundays. It could mean nothing but more silence.

“You’re st-still really clever,” Bill pushes on, because that’s what he does. He reassures. He helps.

Such a shame he can’t help now.

Stan laughs. It sounds bitter and cold. It sounds like his dad.

Bill is more tentative this time and he keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead. “Will he be mad?”

He nearly shrugs, but he stops himself. “Probably,” he says instead, taking careful measures to not let his voice waver. “Yeah.”

“Th-That’s bullshit,” Bill actually sounds angry and that’s not what Stan wanted, he wanted no one to notice this, to notice how much things have changed since summer. “It’s one grade. It w-won’t even affect your GPA.”

They stop outside the Uris house. The light in the living room is on but the rest of the house sits in darkness. There is no car on the drive.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bill says.

The house says nothing.

Stan says nothing.

* * *

His dad screams at him till one in the morning.

The neighbours tell his mother the next day that they nearly phoned for the police.

* * *

He lets the following months lull him.

Really, it’s easy to tell himself nothing’s changed. He’s not getting bad grades anymore, but he’s not sleeping either. It’s a sort of equilibrium that he can learn to live with.

He still gets yelled at. Glasses upside down in the cupboard. School bag left on the table. One time he forgot to tidy his room; he could feel his father’s spit as it hit his face.

There are good moments, too. His dad takes him to the garden centre one day after school, just pulls up outside the building with an outdated pair of sunglasses and a wry smile. They haul an apple tree home and plant it that night, shovels and hands, mud and smiles. Stan cherishes that memory, and every glance he gets at the apple tree in his backyard.

He still has his Sundays, and school, and Bill has stopped asking questions since his dad showed up at school, so he’s fine.

He forgets, sometimes, how much of a disappointment he is. He’ll realise quickly, though, when his grades slip below an A. It jolts him awake, makes him work twice as hard and makes him grateful for Mr Peters incessantly hard marking.

Before he knows it, Christmas has rounded in on him without him noticing. They don’t acknowledge the season in their still, silent house, but Stan had always been aware before when the holidays were coming.

This year he’s been so focused on grades that he doesn’t even notice it until the school is littered with decorations, hanging between ceilings and walls. It’s all sickly red and green, and it makes Stan feels a little stirring of warmth in the pit of his stomach.

“You’re coming, right?” Is the first thing Bev says to him the second to last day of school. He’s heading to the lunch hall when she ambushes him, looping her arm through his with a steely determination.

“Coming?” He repeats. She’s caught him off card, flashcards in hand, studying biology as he was walking.

She rolls her eyes at him, but it’s not mean the way it is sometimes with Richie, or even Bill when he’s feeling particularly obnoxious. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Stanley.”

For the first time, she looks at his face, and the flashcards in his grip, and her tone shifts from the light quality it possessed before. “I’m just kidding. Hey, are you okay?”

He shrugs her off the best he can with their arms still interlinked. “Yeah, just tired.”

“Okay,” she doesn’t push as they round into the hall and head towards the table where Eddie, Ben and Bill are already sat.

She drops his arm, somehow having unwedged the flashcards from his grip. She tucks them into her back pocket, and Stan feels lost without them. He sits down next to Bill instead, taking his sandwich from his bag and playing with the packaging.

“Which one of you shitheads forget to tell Stan about tomorrow night?” Bev asks, with a certain velocity that makes Stan flinch slightly. No one notices.

All eyes shift to Ben, who raises his hand a little sheepishly. Thank god its Ben, Stan thinks. Bev could never be mad at him for long.

“Sorry,” Ben is saying, eyes locking with Stan’s. “I just sort of assumed you’d know.”

Stan gets that. He should know, really. But he misses more than he could ever imagine on those weekday afternoons. Stories just can’t make up for the way they all seem to splutter whenever anyone mention artichokes.

“We’re having a party,” Bev cuts through, leaning forward to depart the news. “Clubhouse, straight after school until-”

“Very late,” Eddie is smiling, small and secretively, as if this is the coolest thing they’ve ever done. It might be, but Stan isn’t sure anymore.

They’re all looking at him, expectantly, waiting for him to say yes. He can’t though.

“I’m not sure guys,” he hears himself saying instead, pushing his sandwich away dejectedly. “You know, curfew and all that-”

“Couldn’t you just ask?” Eddie is saying, like it’s that simple. He, of anyone, should know. His mom was a freak this summer, and Stan can remember her panicking phones calls more than he wants to admit.

Stan swallows, blinks, then shakes his head. “I’m really sorry. They’d never go for it. Not at this short notice.”

“We’ll do it at my pl-place,” Bill’s voice always commands them, not matter how much it wavers. Stan shifts his eyes to him, noting the way his mouth is drawn and his eyes are set.

“You can just t-tell them it’s a winter project thing,” he says it like it’s simple, and Stan really wants to believe it is, so he nods, just a fraction.

“Yeah,” he feels like he’s letting out a breath, like his lungs are collection oxygen again. Bev is grinning at him and Eddie thumps his hands on the table until they’re all laughing, loud and obnoxious.

By the time Richie and Mike sit down, Stan’s face is stretched with a smile, and Bills hand has snaked to squeeze his under the table.

He doesn’t let himself think too much into it.

* * *

The next day, for the first time since summer, he rides to Bill’s house after school.

It’s just how he remembers it. Ordinary. Still, like Stan’s but so much more alive than his has felt in a while.

“How’s your mom?” he asks Bill. They’re riding ahead of the Richie and Beverly, who are walking behind, swapping gossip and a cigarette in a way that has never appealed to Stan. Eddie is indignantly riding in front, with Ben and Mike, refusing to acknowledge the small cloud of smoke following the two taking up the rear.

“She’s okay,” Bill says, but his voice is small and a little hollow. “Still quiet. But she’s not p-pacing around as much at n-ni-night.”

Stan wants to ask ‘and how are you?’, but he can’t. He knows the answer will be ‘I’m fine’ and he knows how far that is from the truth. No one is fine after losing someone like that. No one.

Instead he nods at Bill in a way he hopes comes across as reassuring.

And then, for some reason he can’t explain, he says, “Yeah, my mom’s like that too.”

Bill’s grip on the handlebar falters as he turns to look at Stan, a frown shadowing his face.

Shit, is all he can think. Shit.

He’s said something he shouldn’t. Put his foot in it. And now Bill is looking at him, wondering how Stan’s mom can be like his, when her son is still very much alive.

Richie barrels through the two of them, and Stan nearly loses his footing on the pedals. But it’s okay, because Bill is swept along into a conversation with Mike and Stan can slip into the background, where no one will ask any questions.

* * *

He lets himself relax. They raid Bill’s kitchen the minute the door swings open on its hinges, gathering armful of chips and carrying glass of Coke that clink together in their grip. Bill’s parents are out – working, or visiting family, or something – so the house is quiet when they arrive. Too quiet, Stan thinks, judging by the way Bill’s lip tighten. There should be a pair of shoes on the welcome mat. There should be someone waiting at the base of the stairs until he is invited to join by Bev, or Mike, or sometimes even Stan himself.

Then Richie has shoved past Ben and is be-lining for the three-seater in the den, and Mike is rolling his eyes at Bev as he pulls his shoes off. Just like that, the house is full of life again, and Stan almost doesn’t notice the way Bill’s eyes fix on the stairwell until it’s out of view.

They devour their makeshift feast, sprawled across the messy backroom. Stan finds himself on the three seater, wedged between Richie and Eddie, thinking how wonderful the sweet relief of death would be right at this moment. His eyes keep flickering to Bill, talking quietly to Ben, knees pressed to his chest. Occasionally the other boy will catch his eye and smile. Stan finds himself looking away.

Everything feels normal again. Bev makes a circuit around all of them with excruciatingly graphic Would You Rather’s, whilst Richie tears of his sock and keeps wafting it in Stan’s general direction. He finds himself actually laughing at his friend’s stupidity, because he’s missed it. It’s not the same on a Sunday, when Monday is fast approaching. Friday’s feel free, and effortless, and he has missed them.

He barely registers the phone is ringing, too busy debating Greek Mythology (more specifically, why Dionysus is the worst God, Richie, you’re clearly ignoring Athena). He notices the blur of Bill, creeping out of the room in his peripheral, but thinks nothing of it, really.

Not until Bill is stood in the doorway, cordless clutched to his chest, eyes shifting around and finally landing on Stan.

He can’t move. Instead, he just stays stuck to the sofa, hand draped over his friend’s lap, eyes fixed on Bill.

“It’s your dad,” he says after a while, eyes still anxiously flitting across the floor. His knuckles are white, Stan realises. He’s gripping the phone to his chest.

Everyone is watching him with a careful consideration. He feels his skin burning, all the eyes melting his flesh as he peels himself off the couch and follows Bill into the hallway.

Bill doesn’t leave for the entire conversation. Instead he hovers a few paces from Stan, rocking back and forth on his heels, watching. Always watching.

The conversation is short, but he’s shaking when he hangs up, finger fumbling over the receiver.

(“Where are you?”

“At Bill’s. I told mom yesterday, we’re just studying for this winter project-”

“Did you ask me?”

“Well, no, but you were out till late-”

“So did I give you permission?”

“No…”

“No what?”

“No, sir.”

“I thought you were meant to be a clever boy, Stanley. But look at you. Always getting yourself into trouble. Always being a let-down.”

“I’m so sorry-”

“Bill Denbrough’s house? I’ll be there in five.”)

They just watch each other for a minute. Bill doesn’t look worried, not anymore. Instead he looks sad, uncomfortable. Mostly he looks a sea away. Stan wants to reach out and pull him closer, like shipwreck survivors, but he can’t. The water is too deep and his arms won’t let him.

He thrusts the receiver back towards him. Waits for him to take it. Then, in a voice even he doesn’t recognise, he hears himself mumbling, “I gotta go.”

Neither of them move. Then; “I can wait outside with you.”

Stan swallows. Shakes his head. “No, thank you, Bill. Tell the others there was a…” he grapples around for an excuse but comes up empty.

Bill just nods, fingers tracing the phone gently. He opens his mouth to say something. Stan cuts him off.

“I’ll see you next Sunday, Bill.”

* * *

As it turns out, he doesn’t.

It’s his punishment, apparently, for deliberately breaking his curfew. No more Sundays with his friends. Complete isolation, Stan quickly realises, is the worst thing there is. His dad leaves the house daily for meetings, though Stan doesn’t know if they’re with his congregation or his mistress. That just leaves him, and his quiet mother, and the still house.

He picks up hobbies. Learns how to cook. Digs out his old tuba and rattles through sheet music. Crawls up to the attic and curls up in the window, watching birds dance around the tree in his garden. Sometimes, he feels like he’s going crazy, spending every day alone.

The nights ground him. His father has taken to coming home at seven, eating his tea with his family in utter silence. Anything sets him off nowadays. A meal that’s too cold. The scrape of a fork against a plate. The phone ringing.

Stan thought he had gotten used to the yelling. He quickly realises that it can still make him cry.

His friends call, during the day. Richie calls a lot, talking about sneaking through Stan’s window at night, bringing chocolate and Mountain Dew. He never does, and Stan doesn’t know whether to be upset or relieved.

Mike calls frequently, which surprises him at first. They never really talk, but Stan quickly learns that Mike is the best storyteller. He has a way with words, one that draws you in and makes you listen. It’s mesmerising.

Bill calls once, the first Monday of the holidays. Tells Stan they’re going to visit his uncle in Utah for the break. Stan pretends it doesn’t hurt him.

He spends the whole holiday pretending.

* * *

He’s already run off his feet by the time school starts again. He’s not sleeping most nights. At first he reasons it’s to fit in extra studying, to keep on top for when classes start again.

Then the last day before term restarts, he falls asleep at his desk. In his dreams his father stands over him. His face is misshapen, teeth sharpened, and he tears out a chunk from Stan’s arm. He can’t sleep, he realises. Not when there’s always a monster in his house.

“Are you okay?” Is the first thing Eddie says to him, leaning across to his desk in homeroom. Stan finds himself nodding, but when he does so he feels a little dizzy, so he stops.

Mike seems to share the concern. “You really don’t look well, Stan.”

He doesn’t want their concern, he realises as he scrubs at his eyes in the bathroom, trying to wake up. He wants their friendship, craves their love, but their concern? Their pity? The thought of it makes his skin writhe.

But he does look pale. He examines his reflection in the bathroom mirror and all he can notice is how greasy his hair looks under the light, or how sunken back his eyes are. He looks tired, haggard and done-for.

He looks like his father, he realises.

He promptly throws up into the sink.

Richie is waiting for him outside the bathroom, leaning against the wall, eyes surveying the corridor. He winces when he sees Stan, who is dragging his sleeve across his mouth.

“Wow,” he says, looking Stan up and down, “Eds was right. You do look like shit.”

Stan pulls a face, starting down the corridor, away from Richie and this conversation. Richie follows.

“Not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing. You could totally pull of the sexy vampire thing if you wanted to. For the record, I would fully support that,” Richie steps in front of him, cutting him off mid stride. He falters a little, grasping at the straps of his backpack with two hands.

“But the thing is,” Richie is saying and oh god, is he actually trying to look serious? That is not a good sign. “You don’t look sexy. You just look like you haven’t slept in a millennium.”

Stan doesn’t say anything. The embarrassment eating him up inside is already too much, he doesn’t need Richie to know he’s a coward, afraid of his own father. Or that he’s such a disappointment that his mom won’t even look at him.

Richie is waiting for an answer. He doesn’t get one. Instead he pushes his glasses up his nose. “Look, if you want to talk about it, I’m here. Or Bill, god knows he’s worried about you-”

“What?” Stan breaks his vow of silence. He knew Bill was worried, knew what he overheard in his own hallway, what he saw on that test paper. He didn’t know Bill told Richie, or anyone.

Richie must see the panic in Stan’s eyes, because he’s talking again, and much too fast. “I don’t know what’s going on there, but it doesn’t take a genius to realise Bill is worried about something, and I know it’s definitely not me for once, so it must be you, because I’ve seen the way he looks at you and even I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

Stan’s mind is reeling with the weight of Richie’s words, and Bill’s eyes and Mike’s phone calls. He feels his shirt collar tightening around his neck, struggling for breath in the heat of the corridor.

“Beep beep Richie,” is all he can manage, shoving past his confused friend and out of the double doors that lead to the parking lot.

* * *

The conversation with Richie is nothing on that night.

The house is silent again. His mom is reading in her room, his dad is god knows where and Stan still feels like he’s suffocating. All he wants is some water, which is how he finds himself in the kitchen, downing glass after glass straight from the tap.

He needs it, so every time he empties a glass he fills another, knocking it back, glass after glass until he can’t feel his throat. All he can feel is water, cool and clear. It splashes against his skin and he flinches a little.

Then water isn’t enough. He finds himself crouched in front of his dad’s liquor cupboard, hand grasping the cheapest and strongest whiskey. He mixes it with the water straight from the tap and knocks it back. It scorches the back of his throat and he feels it. Tears sting at his eyes but he keeps drinking, sips turning into gulps until the glass is empty and he is reaching for another.

He never understood therapy. This he could get behind.

He should’ve heard the door open, but the water from the faucet was gushing too powerfully and he could hear nothing else. He downs the last bit on the drink. Feels the light from the hallway cut off, a shadow seeping through the room. He shivers involuntarily.

“Stanley?” He screws his eyes shut, faucet still running. He refuses to turn and look, already knowing what he’ll see. Instead he says nothing.

The shadow moves closer. The footfalls are heavily and Stan feels himself whimper. The sound results in a short laugh.

“That better not be what I think it is.” The voice is getting nearer. Stan can feel his legs buckle beneath himself as his nightmarish dream plays out behind his back.

“Oh, Stanley,” the shadow almost sounds soft as it grasps his shoulder and turns him around. He keeps his eyes firmly shut. “Don’t be such a girl. Look at me.”

His voice is soft, but insistent. Stan doesn’t obey.

“Look at me.”

He does. He has no choice. His eyes are barely open a second before all he can see is black.

A flash of pain as the palm collides with his cheek. Another as he slips and lands awkwardly on his arm.

It’s all so surreal. He’s laughing as he rolls over, cradling the arm crushed beneath him. His eyes are closed again. He doesn’t need to see this, he already knows what it looks like; anger, personified.

He deserves every second of this.

“Such a disappointment,” his father is saying. He can hear the creak of the liquor cupboard doors. The scraping as the Whiskey is returned to its rightful place. “I always knew you’d be a waste. Your mother used to call you sensitive, but that’s just code for pathetic, isn’t it?”

His father is laughing now. Stan isn’t anymore.

“I tried. I really did, Stanley. Your teachers said you were gifted, but apparently all children are gifted these days.”

Stan cracks an eye open. Finds his vision is blurred with tears. Closes it again.

“Knew I’d find you in my liquor cupboard someday. You always were like that. Attention seeking. Depressing.”

There’s a shuffle. His father, moving away from him. Leaving him to rot on the kitchen floor.

‘Did you really think after all this he’d actually care about you?’ a voice is saying. It belongs to Bill.

He whines again, tentatively touching his cheek. Wishes Bill was crouched in front of him right now, like he was that time he fell of his bike and cut his knee open.

No. He’s glad Bill isn’t here. He’s glad he can’t see how much of a fucking disappointment he is.

Instead, he pulls himself under the kitchen table and curls up. He stays there till morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "No one is touching Stan. No one wants to hug the glass man."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW; Self-Harm and Abuse. Please be careful!!

The first thing he does the next morning is inspect the bruise.

His head feels full of cotton wool when he wakes up, and his right arm aches from sleeping under the table, but it’s nothing compared to the searing pain just below his eye. He drags himself out from his makeshift hiding place and begins the trudge to the bathroom. It’s still dark outside, and the house is more silent than usual.

The bathroom light is dim but turning it on still makes him wince. He squeezes his eyes shut. Takes a few stumbling steps towards the mirror and grabs hold of the sink to steady himself. Then he opens his eyes.

His cheek is scarlet in the centre, with a collage of blues and reds spiralling outwards towards the crook of his nose. His eyes are black; like they’re rimmed with eyeliner. The sight of himself makes him want to sob, but he pushes down the waves of tears. He pulls at his cheek, finds himself nearly vomiting at the pain. It looks terrible, but it hurts even worse. He turns the bathroom light off again.

He dresses carefully, as though one wrong move will cause his already damaged self to chip and flake away. He doesn’t even glance in the mirror when he passes- he’s too scared of what he might see.

His mother is awake when he gets downstairs again. she’s nursing a cup of tea at the kitchen table; it looks so normal that Stan nearly forgets he was sleeping under there just last night.

He doesn’t greet her. Knows she won’t return the favour. Instead he just hauls his bag over his shoulder and starts for the door.

Then, she stops him. She pulls herself from her seat and slowly, delicately, blocks his pathway to the door. He’s startled by that, cut off mid-step.

She takes his face into her hands, fingers gently ghosting over the angry bruise, and Stan nearly crumples into her arms. He just wants her to hold him like she used to when he scraped his knee. Gently, eternally, pressed against her shoulder.

He thinks she might, too. Her eyes well with a soft compassion, and she lets out a low, “Oh Stanley…”

He chokes back a sob as her eyes dance over the red mark. He wonders if they’ll leave. If he’ll ever have to see his dad again. If she’ll hold him tightly and never let him go.

Instead, she bites on her lip, and murmurs softly, “I’ve got some concealer upstairs. We’ll have that covered up in no time.”

He sits on the bottom of the stairs as she carefully applies layers of thick makeup, caking his cheek in the stuff. He tries not to wince when she presses down too hard. She doesn’t acknowledge the mark, but does sound rather proud when showing Stan her handiwork.

“There,” she almost coos, mirror flitting in her grip. “All fixed.”

Stan doesn’t agree, but at least the bruise is no longer visible.

* * *

No one at school notices.

Stan doesn’t know why he expected them to see through layers of makeup, but still, he feels disappointed when they don’t. That thought makes him feel sick. Did he really want them to know? To see the discoloured skin on his face and know how much he deserved it?

Everything is the same, and everything has changed. He feels like he’s wading through long, thick grass, just trying to be the same person he was this summer. Sometimes someone will throw a joke his way, like a bone, but he can never retaliate fast enough. His brain is always reeling too fast, too full with other things, and he can’t concentrate on quipping when he knows what’s waiting at home.

They ask if he’s okay. His friends, visiting family, neighbours and friends of his parents. The questions are a daily fixture in his life.

“Are you okay?”

“What’s going on with Stanley?”

“Are you alright, young man?”

“And how’s your boy? Looked a little under the weather.”

He never gets the chance to answer himself. His father’s hand is always there, tightly squeezing his shoulder, filling in any gaps and clearing away any concern. People trust his father. He’s respectable, and charming, and he’s got a kind smile.

He’s not the sort of man to hit his son for forgetting to take out the garbage.

Stan starts to understand how Bill must’ve felt, those first few days after disaster. His words seemed to lodge in his throat more than usual, and while his eyes portrayed this desperation, his parents would always answer the same.

“He’s fine. He just misses him.”

Stan wonders know why he never tried to ask Bill. Wonders if the answer would’ve been different.

* * *

Even his friends speak for him. Stan knows they don’t mean it maliciously, or to hide the truth, and they never do it to his face. But he catches Ben once, talking to their form teacher outside of class. Hears the intrusive questioning, and Bens casual, “he’s fine. Just stressed about school.”

He corners Ben after, at his locker. Slams his hand against the metal and demands, “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?” Ben, for his part, doesn’t flinch at the aggressive slam of Stan’s hand on his locker. He just sounds confused, which justifiable. Stan is rarely angry; peeved, yes, but always civil and cordial. Never angry.

“That I’m stressed about school.”

Ben looks a little ashamed, shuffling awkwardly, but he stands his ground. “She was just worried about you. She was saying you look tired, and I didn’t want her to worry.”

It makes sense. Stan should be grateful to Ben, really, for preventing an impending calamity. Stan’s body aches just thinking about what would’ve happened if she had called home, spoken to his father about his crying in the toilets and his inability to concentrate on anything.

Instead, he finds himself snapping at Ben. “Next time tell her to get lost. It’s none of her business.”

He starts towards the cafeteria, then stops and spins on his heels, spitting, “and it’s none of yours either.”

Stan wonders that night, as he lays on his bedroom floor counting the cracks in the ceiling, eye ringed with a fresh black bruise, if his father somehow found out anyway.

* * *

The worst of everything is that his friends have stopped touching him.

They’ve always been a tactile group; arms over shoulders, warm hugs, elbows knocking into each other. Stan never thought he cared much for it, but he feels it’s absence like a gaping wound in his stomach.

It starts the day after the black eye. He ran out of concealer two days before and he knows better than to be caught at a drugstore buying more, so he goes to school with the bruise evident on his face. He’s got a note from his mother in his bag, notifying teachers how he tripping coming down their loft ladder, but it does nothing to stop the intrusive glares in the corridor.

By the time he reaches his friends, they are watching him with a barely concealed pity that makes his skin writhe. He slumps down into his seat and does his best to retell a version of the loft ladder story that seeps idiocy and hilarity. By the end of it, tensions seem to have eased considerably and everyone is laughing.

Everyone, except Bill and Beverly.

He tries not to notice, focusing instead on playing along with Richie and Eddie. He does a bad job, eyes flitting back to Bill every few seconds.

It happens as they’re parting. Richie is shoving Ben, and Ben rolls his eyes and pushing him back. Bev is laughing, hooking her arm through Mike’s as they start for homeroom, and Bill and Eddie are running through this elaborately stupid handshake they created just the other day.

No one is touching Stan. No one wants to hug the glass man.

He notices the pattern after that. Bev will rest her head on anyone’s shoulder except his. Richie likes to throw his arm around all of their shoulders but he’s more careful now with Stan, hooking his arm with a consideration that makes Stan feel like a crumpled piece of paper.

He tries not to let it hurt him. The contact would be painful anyway, with his bruised forearms and his chest that seems eternally peppered with small cuts from that time he tried dragging a broken bottle across his skin. He never did it after that one time, found it smarted more than it eased anything, but the cuts are still there.

It still hurts, though, that they won’t touch him.

* * *

He’s used to the pain, now. He can’t relax unless there’s the dull throb of something in his bones, be it his father’s handiwork or his own. He’s taken to that now- digging fingernails under flesh until he bleeds. It never feels quite the same, but sometimes it’s close enough. No one ever told him that pain could be so addictive.

He’s at temple with his father when someone notices it. It’s a crooked man, whose name Stan can never remember, but he has a kind smile and eyes like saucers. He’s talking to his father when he notices him, or more accurately, notices the shadow of crimsons and blues across his cheek.

“That looks nasty son,” he says gently, looking directly at Stan himself, “You should get that looked at.”

Stan just swallows and nods, very slightly.

His father, for once, doesn’t say anything, eyes fixed on Stan in a way that suggests he’s walking a very fine line.

So, he smiles at the man, ignoring how that makes his cheek sting with the effort. “It’s nothing. I just fell off my bike.”

The man surveys him, eye vacant of judgement. Then, in a measured tone, he looks at his father and says, “You better tell him to be careful.”

His father, ever the perfectionist, goes one step further.

Stan’s bike is locked away in the garage the minute they get home.

* * *

The excuses mount on top of the bruises, like a garbage heap, until he’s buried underneath and barely able to breathe.

“I slipped and hit the corner of the table.”

“A door flew back in my face, it’s no big deal really.”

“Someone elbowed me on the way to European History. Hurts like a bitch.”

His friends never stop asking, but Stan gets better and more creative with his stories. It’s a shame they stop believing him.

No one ever outwardly doubts it, but there’s always this airy silence after he’s mumbled an excuse that makes his stomach knot. Mike will push the conversation on and away, and Bev will reach out to squeeze his hand under the table, but he still feels their pity under his skin.

He wishes it was Bill’s hand under the table, but Bill won’t even look at him anymore.

Sometimes, Stan wonders if this really is all his fault. It’s easy to see the cracks, to see himself as his father sees him; weak, malleable, disappointing. But something uneasy sits in his chest, trying to escape. It’s the idea that maybe, just maybe, he’s not the sick one.

The thought is dizzying and terrifying and usually dissipates when he looks at a test score, or himself in the mirror.

* * *

The last person he expects to confront him is Eddie.

He’s walking home when it happens. No more bike means no more lenient curfew and he has to start home the minute school lets out now. He told his friends the bike broke. They don’t argue with him.

He’s about halfway there when he hears the signature wheeze of his friend. He stops short, turning on his heels and comes face to face with Eddie.

Eddie, his friend since kindergarten. Eddie, who used to build sandcastles with him when they were five and who’s bike he used to cling to before he learnt to ride his own. Eddie, who is stood in front of him now, clutching antiseptic wipes and looking like he’s about to cry.

“Are you okay?” Stan asks cautiously. He’s used to being the subject of that question, as of late, and it’s odd to spin it around.

Eddie nods and tries to catch his breath. Everything about him is erratic, as he holds the wipes out to Stan, at arm’s length.

Stan surveys them. There’s no bruise on his face today, nor is he aware of one peeking out from under his shirt collar. He tugs it up anyway.

Eddie must sense the confusion, because he gestures vaguely with his free hand. “For your arms…”

Stan thinks of the jagged, torn up skin on his forearms. Thinks of the layers of fabric between them and Eddie.

“I saw them the other day,” Eddie is explaining, fingernails digging into the plastic of the wipes, “when we were changing for gym. You hadn’t even bandaged them, and I don’t need to tell you how unsanitary that is, Stan.” He’s rambling, but Stan doesn’t stop them. His mind is too busy moving a hundred miles-per-hour, thinking about Eddie, and the dried blood, and how the shorter boy can never keep a secret from a certain one of their friends.

“Did you tell Richie?” He asks, not even wanting to know the answer.

Eddie shakes his head, like he’s taking a vow of silence. “I didn’t tell anyone. I won’t tell anyone. Just please, please, keep them clean?”

Stan takes the wipes, with a shaky smile, and hopes Eddie won’t tell anyone.

* * *

The pain becomes a blur as the day’s fold into one another. Every memory is a white wash of the other, until every day is just one continuous sludge through life.

He divides his days into segments of five minutes. If he is still breathing by the end of each segment, he counts it as a victory. There’s only 288 segments in a day, after all.

He’s on the 74th segment when his father breaks his nose with his open palm.

Stan barely feels the heavy palm connect with his skin. He can’t even remember what he did wrong, just that it was enough to warrant physical retribution. Anything is enough nowadays, but Stan doesn’t mind because the pain centres him.

He feels nothing. His eyes water involuntarily and he finds himself slumping into a seat at his kitchen table. There’s this white noise, ringing in his head, and his vision is swimming. For the first time in a while, he wants to sleep.

But he doesn’t, because his eyes are just flickering shut when the door slams, and the sound is enough to shatter his blissful ignorance. He is suddenly aware of the blood coating his chin and shirt, pooling around his feet. He’s aware of the screaming agony in his head. He’s aware of the black spots in his vision.

The house is silent, as always. His mother is out. His father just left. Maybe that’s why he finds himself clutching the phone, dialling a number he didn’t even know he knew off by heart.

He’s only called it once before, to borrow a cheat sheet for American Literature. He doesn’t need a cheat sheet anymore. He’s acing that subject now.

“Hello?” the voice is distant, a little confused but clear, and it makes Stan sob with an instant relief.

“Bev,” he hears someone weep into the telephone. Belatedly, he realises it’s himself.

“Stan?” she returns. He hears the phone shuffle, and suddenly her voice is stronger, “Is that you?”

He nods before realising she can’t see him. The noise he lets out is a strange concoction of a sob and a laugh.

“What’s happened, Stan? Are you okay?”

Part of him wants to protest, tell her that he’s fine and hang up the phone. But his head hurts so fucking much and the blood won’t stop and he really needs someone to hug him and tell him everything will be okay.

He screws up his eyes, whispering mournfully into the receiver, “I need your help, Bev. God, I really need your help right now.”

There’s nothing but short breaths down the line. Then, “I’m on my way.” Followed by silence.

* * *

Stan does nothing while he waits. He doesn’t dare move from the kitchen, scared the gushing crimson will stain the carpet beyond repair. He sits in the kitchen. Stares out the window. Wishes he would just stop breathing.

The blood has stopped flowing by the time Bev arrives. She uses the backdoor, which isn’t locked and would be easy to break through even if it were. He hears her before he sees her. The heavy fall of her combat boots. The creaks of the door. The horrified, “Oh my god,” that makes him squeeze his eyes shut.

And then he feels her. Her hands cupping his face. Her breath, hot on his neck. Her chest as she presses him against her in an awkward embrace.

“No,” he hears himself protesting pathetically, “no, no, no.”

Her hand ghosts over his hair, her fingers running through the tangled curls. “It’s okay, Stan. It’s okay.”

“No,” he tries again, but his voice still shakes, “No, I’m going to get blood on you, no…”

Bev snorts. It sounds more like a sob. “I don’t give a shit.”

* * *

“Can I ask you something?”

They’re in the bathroom now. Stan is sat on the edge of the bath, where the tap is pouring against the tub. He finds he can’t look at it, so he focuses instead on Bev.

She’s crouched next to him. She’s using damp toilet roll to dab at the remainder of blood that has now caked around his nose. She had wanted to use the bath towel, but it had sent Stan into another spiral so she’d given up pretty easily.

If his brain wasn’t mush right now, he’d find Eddie’s antiseptic wipes. He can’t even think about that now.

“Stan?” Bev is speaking again, waving her hand gently in front of his face. Gently is the right word. She’s doing everything gently now, even cursing out his father.

He looks up and meets her eyes, hands reaching out to find the smooth edge of the tub under his grip. “Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?” she repeats, withdrawing the tissue and rocking back on her heels.

It’s a dangerous game. She could ask anything, really. But still Stan mutters “shoot” and opens the door to her probing.

“Why me?” she’s asking, her voice delicate. “I’m glad you called, I’m so fucking glad, but… why not Eddie? Or Mike, or Bill? Why me?”

That’s not what he was expecting. He finds himself shrugging, playing with a loose thread on the towel beside him. “Guess I thought you’d understand.”

Bev doesn’t say anything, just presses her mouth into a thin line and reaches out to take his hand. She traces circles across the top until he forgets the throbbing pain in his nose.

“We should tell someone.”

They’re still sat in the bathroom. The two of them are crowded into the tub, backs pressed against the tiles, legs draped over the edge. Stan’s noise isn’t bleeding anymore but it still aches distantly, and he’s aware of how crooked it sits on his face. Just another permanent reminder of his failings as a son.

She says it like it’s simple. Like the very idea of anyone else knowing doesn’t fill him with dread. She says we, like it’s the two of them against everyone else. Maybe she doesn’t mean just them- maybe this ‘we’ is all of them. It’s a reassuring idea.

Stan doesn’t answer.

* * *

“Are you going to be okay here?”

It’s getting dark outside and they’ve both been distantly aware of Bev’s bike, discarded on the sidewalk, and of Stan’s parent’s imminent arrival.

They’re stood in the doorway. Bev is strapping her biking gloves on, and Stan can’t help but think, despite everything, how cool she looks right now. Her face is carved with open concern and he can’t stand to look at it for too long. Instead he watches the hairs on his arms dance in the cooling night air.

The question is stupid, and Stan can feel his mouth quirking into a demeaning smile. The truth is, he will be fine. There’ll be no more blood tonight. Tomorrow? He can never be sure, but his father is always a little more careful after leaving a mark.

He’s never broken anything more than skin before. It’s new territory.

He just shrugs. Bev has hauled her bike upright and is surveying him with sad eyes. They make him squirm.

She reaches out to squeeze his arm, thinks better of it and lets her hand drop to her side again.

“Call. If you need anything.” Her eyes are wide, like saucers, and so full.

Stan nods, arms wrapping around his chest.

They both know he won’t.

* * *

The days after that become a blur.

He stops counting his life in incriments. He stops counting anything, really.

His dad takes one look at the blood smeared across the bathroom floor and drives Stan’s face against the tiles. His broken nose starts bleeding again, fresh and thick in the back of his throat, and now he has a purple bruise to match.

Bev grips his hand so tight when she see’s it at school. He refuses to acknowledge it.

His friends have stopped asking for the stories, but he gives them anyway. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to justify it to, but it doesn’t make him feel better. It makes him feel worse, the way Bill’s jaw tightens every time he spots a new bruise around Stan’s neck.

He just can’t breathe anymore. Not at school, with all the eyes and bodies and convulsing mass of people who threaten to squash him. certaintly not at home, where his dad’s disappointment only seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

He’s taken to sleeping in the bathroom at night- not that he actually sleeps much. Theres a lock on the door and the smooth curve of the tub feels safer than his bed. Sometimes, he turns on the tap and shivers under the pressure of the cold water.

Sometimes – very rarely, but sometimes – he thinks about filling the tub and pushing himself under until the hazy grey cloud of pain is replaced with a dull nothingness.

He can never sleep after those thoughts. 

* * *

His world is like wet tissue paper. It isn’t long before it all comes apart in the palm of his hands.

“Stan. Hey, Stan, wait up.”

Bill hasn’t spoken directly to him in days, weeks, and even now his voice sounds hazy, like it’s floating somewhere distant. Still, he’d recognise it anywhere.

Stan stops, half-turning, hands instinctively gripping at his bag straps like a safety blanket. He does it when he’s nervous, and he’s sure if anyone knows, it’s Bill. Bill, who still sleeps with a nightlight tucked under his bed. He’d understand.

Bill is smiling at him, squinting in the sunlight, panting like he’s run a marathon. Stan numbly wonders how long he’s been following Stan. From AP History, maybe? From when he first pushed through the safe haven of school and headed back to his own personal hell? It’s hard to tell.

“Hey,” Bill breathes, stopping to draw in a breath.

Stan feels a nervous laugh bubble in his mouth. “Hey, Bill,” he returns uncomfortably. He doesn’t know what Bill wants, but it must be something, due to the way his eyes keep nervously skating between Stan and the sidewalk.

But all he says, grabbing at the straps of his own bag, is “Can I walk with you?” and Stan finds himself nodding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has just been sat in my drafts so I thought I'd post it. Might write another chapter to tie it off at some point, but the Roots series and my longer Stenbrough fic come first, unfortunately!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the tags and be careful!! I think I've tagged everything, but if not please message me and I'll update!!

Stan is sure this is what death feels like.

There’s a screaming nothingness in his head, an aching emptiness which starts at his temple and spreads like wildfire down his spine and to the tips of his fingers. He tries to ball his hands up into fists but the effort hurts, so he stops. He tries to open his eyes but they sting with the white, dulcet colour of the light source above his head so he screws them shut, and doesn’t try again.

He’d be sure he was dead, if it wasn’t for the methodical beeping coming from his left and the wires, like strings, which hold him in place. He might as well be chained to the bed – is this a bed? – for the way the flimsy wires hold him down. He doesn’t open his eyes, but does strain to lift his hand and trace his fingertips up the wires. He tugs, hard, and winces with the effort. It makes his head sting, and his tightly-closed eyes water. He doesn’t try again. Instead, he draws in a deep breath and finds that it makes his chest hollow and sting.

Realistically, he knows he should be panicked. He’s alone, and vulnerable, and hurt, and he should seek out answers. Instead, he curls up on himself like an injured animal, retiring to lick it’s wounds clean, or to die alone.

* * *

_“Stan, please just listen to me,” Bill is begging, he’s pleading, and if Stan were half the person he wishes he were, he’d turn around. He can’t though, so he just keeps walking, determined as ever. He feels warm, prickly all over and his head is pounding. He shouldn’t feel like this, he thinks. Shouldn’t feel uncomfortable around Bill – scared of Bill? The idea is laughable._

_“You ha-have to hear me out,” Bill’s voice breaks and snaps on the last syllable, giving way shakily. Stan should stop, would stop, if he was a good friend, but the straps of his bag are digging firmly into the palms of his hands as he pushes onwards, maintaining his steady set pace. He can’t be late, and though that threat is normally the biggest in his mind, right now every anxious fibre of his being is directed towards Bill. His bike is squeaking as the wheels rotate down the road, persistently following Stan, who had bolted the minute things got touchy in their conversation._

_And because Bill is such a good friend, he’s still pushing on, running after him, even though Stan is a cold, unrelenting coward- _

_“Stanley pleh-please will you just stah-stop walking,” Bill steps in front of him, and Stan didn’t even realise he had caught up with him. Silver blocks the path, awkwardly cutting Stan off at an odd angle, and though Stan feasibly knows he could just step around Bill and make his escape, he still feels trapped. It’s the first time he’s really looked at Bill in weeks, and god, he looks as awful as Stan feels. There’s a gauntness in his face, like it’s been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop, and a shakiness in the way he holds the bikes handle bars. His eyes hold their usual intensity, but his lips are clamped together and twitching, just like they did when he had watched Georgie’s coffin lowered into the ground. Stan had been there for him then. Where is he now?_

_Stan obeys him and stops walking, but his mind is still ten steps ahead, thinking about how he has fifteen minutes to get home, and how his head is pounding and his nose won’t stop running, and he really can’t afford to be ill right now._

_“We’ve got it all planned out,” Bill is saying, somewhere distant, rocking the bikes front wheel a little with the intensity of his grip. “We’ll call the police, and you can tell them everything and show them- show them what he does to you and then you can stay with your aunt, or with me, or Richie – you know how much Maggie loves you – and we’ll be out of here soon, anyway, but we’re gonna sort it out Stan, I promise.”_

_Bill doesn’t stutter once, and Stan would be proud of that if his mind wasn’t elsewhere, seventy miles ahead and progressing with every second. He hasn’t even said anything, not to Bill. Bill shouldn’t know. Stan really has fucked this one, because if Bill does know, then so does everyone in this goddamn town, and that does not bode well for him, or for his face, oh god –_

_“Who’s ‘we’?” he asks instead, working hard to keep his tone level and eyes cold. Bill blanches at that, and Stan’s heart twinges, knowing he caused that look._

_Bill rakes a hand through his hair with one hand, the bike wobbling slightly. “Bev told me, but it’s okay Stan, I’ve been reading up about this-”_

_Stan is angry, and he’s not sure why. He’s not felt any emotion stronger than a slight twinge in months, and for some reason he feeds off it, the fire in the pit of his stomach. There’s sarcasm when he speaks, venomous and stinging. “Thank god you’ve read some books, that’ll fix everything,”_

_“Stan, please just listen-” His words don’t trip Bill up, and neither does his movement, dodging out from behind the bike and setting off home again. He thinks about the ache in the left side of the face the last time he was late home, and it pushes him forward, even if Bill is there pulling him back, a perfect balance_

_“Did they all elect you as their spokesperson? Is this an intervention?” there’s some genuine intrigue in the question, a humiliating curiosity as he thinks about carving concern into his friends. He craves summer, it’s freedom and ignorance, when the most pain was caused by stinging nettles and scraped knees. _

_“We’re worried-”_

_Worry doesn’t suit his friends; they do sympathy well, and hurt is ingrained into the life of a loser, but they can’t cling to this worry which will drive them down. Stan will drive them down. Might as well sever the strings now._

_“Don’t listen to everything Bev says. She lies,” Stan spits the words, and feels the twinge of guilt as he slanders the girl who had mopped up his blood and held him in the bath. “Didn’t she tell you she loved you, Bill?”_

_It’s a low blow, Stan knows it, but it works because Bill’s steps falter and he has to struggle to keep up with the bulk of a bike by his side. For the first time, Stan is glad his bike is locked up in his shed, if it means he can keep ahead of Bill and not have to see the betrayal in his eyes._

_“Don’t call Bev a liar, she’s been fruh-freaking out about this ever since you rah-rang her for help with a fuh-fucking broken nose,” Bill snaps, voice splintering off only a little, but his ferocious tone breaking on the last few words. He sounds close to tears, and Stan wishes he could do what Bill is doing for him, to try and nurse him through the hurt, but he can’t._

_“Didn’t she make out with Hanscom a week later?” he carries on instead, chin tilted towards the sky. Even Richie would say that it was out of line to go that far, but Richie isn’t here. “In the school parking lot?”_

_Bill doesn’t take the bait, instead sighing in frustration and taking a double-step to keep up. “This isn’t about that, Stan. Will you please just listen to me?” His tone borders begging, and the guilt’s there again, tugging at Stan’s heart until he grounds to a stop and rounds on his friend. He could throw up now. He really could. `_

_“Why?” He spits, and for the first time the truth is there, angry and glaring. He stops, and spins around, and Bill stops too, suddenly. “You didn’t bother to listen to me. You don’t care what’s actually happening to me, you only care about your little invented fantasy. Go on, Ask me anything. I’ll answer.”_

_Bill looks hesitant for the first time since he barrelled out of school after Stanley, scuffing his shoes against the cracked tarmac._

_“Go on,” Stan encourages, harshly. He’s still not sure what’s going to come out when he starts speaking. The truth? Maybe. If he’s brave enough._

_“How did you break your nose?” Bill doesn’t hesitate this time. He’s starting small, no doubt building up, but already Stan can’t breathe. His ribcage seems to shrink in size, crushing any air out of his lungs. _

_“I passed out,” Stan isn’t sure why he’s lying. What’s left to hide? Bill knows, the shame is out, and he might as well embrace it. He can’t though, because there’s still a mask on his face, even if it is shattered, and pieces are flaking away. He doesn’t want things to hurt anymore, but he’s so used to the numb nothingness of his silent house that resisting feels an awful lot like hurting too. “Slammed my face into a kitchen cupboard. I think I got concussion, and I could only remember Bev’s number.”_

_Bill doesn’t believe him; the disbelief is plain on his face. “Stan…” his voice is dripping with worry and it stains Stan’s skin an awful red raw colour he won’t be able to scrub off. He looks close to tears, and the last time he bit his lip like that it was when Ben accidentally drank from Georgie’s plastic cup. “How did you really break your nose?”_

_“I thought we trusted one another,” Stan can hear his own voice crack and oh god no, he can’t cry, because if he cries he’ll never stop. He can’t cry, no matter how much he wants to curl up in Bill’s arms right there on the sidewalk._

_It must work, because Bill nods, small and thoughtful, and moves onto the next question. “Does he huh-hurt you?” _

_Stan shakes his head hard, even though it’s already splitting, because if he says yes there’s no going back. It’s not so bad, in that house, he realises. The shame of admitting why he gets it, why he accepts it, would be so much worse. _

_Bill is going to say something else, but Stan stops him, because he’s read the books too, alone in his room, and he knows that nothing can happen if he doesn’t admit there’s anything wrong. _

_“Why can’t you just believe me?” he asks, voice close to fracturing, taking a faltering step back from Bill. “I’m fine. I’m handling it. I’m fine.”_

_“Eddie told me about yuh-yuh-yuh- shit!” Bill curses himself loudly, and the noise is startling to Stan, frightening even. He takes another step back, hands seeking his bag straps and squeezing them until they imprint on his palms. _

_Bill matches him, step-for-step, and when he can’t force his words out he reaches for Stan’s sleeve and tugs it down, arm pinched in a vice-like grip. Stan thrashes, trying to retract, but Bill clings on, slowly peeling the sleeve back. The marks look just as angry and inflamed in the daylight. _

_“Fuck,” Bill’s eyes are blown wide, and his shock allows Stan to draw his arm back and force the sleeve of his jacket down. “Fuh-fuck, Stah-Stah-Stan.”_

_Stan feels like he’s run a marathon. He’s out of breath from the struggle, from the fact he hasn’t eaten properly in days and that he’s definitely coming down with something. He doubles over, hands on his knees, struggling to refill his lungs._

_Bill hesitates, then awkwardly sets a hand on his shoulder. “It’s uh-okay. We can- we can guh-g-guh-get help, I’ll cuh-call the oth-others. It’s guh-gonna buh-be o-o-okay Stuh-Stanley. I’m guh-gonna make it okay. I suh-swear.”_

_He’s still talking, but Stan’s ears are filling with blood and he can’t hear anything other than a loud rushing and the sound of his heart pounding in his throat. He’s staring down at the shatters of Stanley Uris on the pavement, squashed and bloody beneath his feet. The boy stood upright is just a shell, barely clinging to his upright posture._

_“I have to go home,” he whispers, then, louder; “I have to go. I’m gonna be late.”_

_“Stan?” Bill frowns, as he starts again in the direction of home, head spinning, vision blurred. He doesn’t run after him, though, rooted to his spot, frowning after Stan. “Stuh-Stan? Wha-what are you duh-duh-doing?”_

_He doesn’t stop, because he’s determined, carrying the crushed body of Stanley Uris in his arms. He has to save him. _

_He turns around, taking a few steps backwards, spurred on by the adrenaline in his veins. “This isn’t one of those things you can fix, Bill, with your books and your… spirit. Not everything is as simple as that.”_

_He waits for Bill to come after him. He doesn’t._

_He carries the mutilated body of Stanley Uris home in his arms._

* * *

The next time Stan wakes up, his head is considerably clearer. Still muggy, and there are things missing, but he can manage to crack his eyes open a little without wincing at the bright light focusing in overhead.

It’s his body that hurts, cracked and sore. He can’t even lift his hands, heavy like lead by his side, and he panics briefly that they’re gone, and he’s suffering from some phantom limb syndrome. But then he forces his eyes to scan the length of his body and sees his fingers very much intact, and the base for the back of his hand which has been punctured with a needle. It leads to a small wire, which in turn leads to a bag of some sort of fluid, which hangs limply on a frame next to him. His head takes some effort to move, and it makes him groan when he tries, a long throaty sound in the base of his throat. There’s a small rectangular window on one side, and a curtain on the other, partitioning him off from the rest of the ward. There’s no mistaking that now; he’s on a hospital ward, and his side aches and there’s something foggy in his brain, like something is missing. If he screws his eyes shut, he can feel the blossoming of pain in his leg and faintly hear his mother calling his name, _not exactly distraught but certainly anxious-_

“Stanley,” there’s a shift in the pressure of the bed as it sags under a new weight, and his mother’s voice is soft and faint in his ears. He opens his eyes to her face, blocking out the violent light, and she’s smiling, a watery sort of smile which doesn’t reach her eyes. He can feel her hand in his, squeezing tighter and tighter.

He opens his mouth to say something, but it’s dry, and cracked, and he barely makes a noise before she’s soothing him, moving closer and pressing his clasped hand to her chest. “No, darling,” she says and Stan vaguely registers that he should feel some comfort from his mother, but he still feels a screaming nothingness. “Don’t try and talk. The doctor said you needed your rest.”

Stan feels his face trying to form into a frown, but his skin feels melted. He reaches for the wire connected to his hand, and with great effort tries to pulls it out. It feels wrong, an intruder in his body, yet more a part of it than the memories he can’t recapture. His mother grasps at that hand too, and pulls it away, so that he can’t reach the offending tube.

“It’s morphine,” she explains, and she’s looking into Stan’s eyes for the first time in months, and Stan would weep if he didn’t feel nothing. “It’s helping you feel better, Stanley. You had a really nasty fall, darling.”

A fall. Stan tries to frown again, but he can’t. He opens his mouth to protest it, but he can’t do that either, and all that comes out is a broken yelp which scratches at his throat. His mom looks weepy as she shakes her head and snakes a hand out to stroke his hair. The gesture would feel nice if he could at least feel it.

“Go back to sleep baby,” she coos softly, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, holding onto him as though he’s strong enough to slip through her grasp. Stan would protest, would scream that he doesn’t even know why he’s in this ward in the first place, but there’s something sticky in his veins which pushes him further under.

* * *

_Three steps. _

_The floor creaks beneath his foot on the fourth. He sidesteps it. _

_Another step. Two to the left, four forward. A pause at the edge of the doorframe. Through it he can see his mother on the couch, back ridged, eyes unfocused. He clocks her presence, and echoes her silence. He moves another three steps._

_The stairs are in front of him. There’s a clock to the left of them, and if he shifts his focus he can read the time. He’s late. _

_There’s stirring in the kitchen. He could make it up the stairs, up the ladder, barricade himself in the loft. He’d have to run fast. His head is foggy, and there’s the blossoming of a headache in his temple, but he could run if he had to. He could make it._

_Or he could freeze. If he stands still, silent, the threat could pass him by, like a predator stalking its prey. Stan knows, logically, that humans don’t function off echo location and the stench of fear, but sometimes it feels like they do. _

_He takes another step forward. The floor groans at his weight._

_Shit._

_He always though flight or fight would be a reactionary process, but Stan is still debating the two when he’s no longer alone. His head swims, so he looks down. If he’s still, if he’s quiet, eyes trained down and breathing shallow, the threat could pass him by. He wishes he’d taken Bill up on his offer, run away when he still had the chance. He’s a coward in more ways than one._

_He’s talking, but Stan’s head is swimming, sticky and aching. There’s a sharp pain in his nose, too._

_Are you listening to me? The answers no, Stan says out loud, and there are fingers grasping at his collar. He’s almost as tall as his father, nose to nose, eyes a deeper blue that’s almost black with anger. Stan should be scared, he is scared, but still he flexes his fingers in a fist and pushes them against his father’s cheek until something cracks. _

_The deep exhale and grunt of pain reverberate in Stan’s ears, and the blow that strikes him back is heavy-handed, making his eyes water. He hits the floor, bones folding on top of one another. _

_His father hits him. He goes down, licks his wounds, and sleeps off the sharp pain stinging in his skin. He hasn’t hit him when he’s down before. Hasn’t kept going, shoe driving against his ribs, his face, his torso till the beige carpet is the colour of sticky nail polish._

_Someone screams. Stan presses a finger to his lips, to see if it’s him, but they’re firmly pressed shut. He smears blood across them. It’s sweet, bitter and metallic. _

_He claws at the bottom step, nails digging into the carpet, pulling himself up, crawling with his stomach flat to the carpet. Someone has a hold on his ankles, dragging him down, burning his face against the coarse carpet._

_More screaming. _

_It hurts his head._

* * *

The next time he wakes up, the sticky sweetness of the morphine is gone, instead replaced by liquid fear. He wakes with his heart in his mouth, and sits up so violently that the wires pull from his skin and the machine at his side starts screaming. It wakes his mother, sleeping folded in the hospital chair next to him, and she starts sobbing as Stan thrashes. He’s sweaty, drowning in the bedsheets, and he needs to get out, but his legs betray him and fold beneath him as he takes a faltering step. He can’t get his father’s voice out of his head, and the fear is so much more than the pain in his ribcage, so he tries to push on, to crawl on, dragging himself squeaking across the hospital floor.

His mother stops him. it’s not hard, because there’s no fight left in his body, which is pathetic because he lived like this for months and he was fine. He remembers the fall now, and all he hopes for is the release of whatever temporary amnesia he first woke up with. His mother is trying to hold his body, trying to push the tubes back into his abused hand, when the nurse comes in. She tries to sedate him, but the thought of going back under surprises a sob out of Stan until he’s begging, clawing at the floor. He’s had more sleep in the past week then he has in the preceding year, and the nightmares are back in full force. The nurse relents, on the promise that he calms down and gets back in bed, so he does both. He doesn’t even protest as they hook him back into the machinery – an IV drip now, not the morphine he feels his body yearning for.

His mother holds him as he cries, quiet but full-bodied into her chest. It’s the first time he’s cried in months, and he no longer feels empty but instead hurting, mind and body aching. His mom tries to soothe him with the kind words, but it isn’t what he wants. He wants answers to all the questions circling his mind like a drain.

He’s too wrecked to ask them all.

* * *

It’s takes a few weeks to build up the energy to ask the few questions circling his mind like it’s a plughole.

He never realised how easy it would be to fall into a routine at the hospital. His bodies still mending, cracked ribs fusing, aching legs regaining strength, and the bruises are healing too. The nurses never ask how he got them, so he wonders numbly whether his mother already told them. They treat him like glass too, holding his elbow as they circle the ward for exercise, gently refusing when he asks them for morphine, or for something just as strong, to ease the pain.

It’s not the pain in his body, but rather the pain in his head. He finds he always has a headache, and that the bright lights of the hospital ward sting his eyes. He has a hard time concentrating on the simple school work the doctors put in front of him, even the easiest of sums, and it generally makes him tear up in frustration because how is he ever going to go to college with a brain this broken? His mother holds him when he cries, and rubs his hand, eyes full of pity and something else Stan can’t quite place.

His mom’s always there. She doesn’t have a job to get to, and Stan knows this, and yet he’s still surprised each morning when he wakes up and finds her asleep, folded in on herself on the uncomfortable arm chair. She leaves him alone for his physio, and when he’s in the bathroom, but apart from that she’s there, watching him carefully, as though he may disappear if she doesn’t. It stings a little, to have her eyes on him now, when the hurt has already happened, but Stan is just grateful she’s there at all.

He’s not so grateful for his shrink. He’s a balding man, with a sharp chin and cutting eyes, and he rarely says anything, just surveys Stan over the top of his glasses and occasionally writes down notes in his brown leather bound notebook. Stan would love to hold the notebook, to write in it, but he can’t even hold a pen properly yet, despite all his attempts. It’s stupid. He damaged his ribs, not his head. His father would tell him that it’s all his fault, that he doesn’t want it enough, that he’s giving up and admitting how useless he is before even putting pen to paper.

His father’s not here.

He doesn’t know what to say to the shrink, so he doesn’t say much. There sessions are spent in silence, and the shrink sets homework that Stan never does, and then it’s over. After a few weeks of these daily appointment, the shrink stops Stan on the way out.

“Mr Uris,” He asks, voice cracking like it’s effort to even speak. “You have to help me to help you. Do you want to get better?” He asks Stan. The question itself is flooring. He is getting better every day, his ribs healing, his bruises failing, and yet his father is an ever present thought in his mind, and he can only assume that’s why he even has a shrink. Is forgetting his father getting better? He can’t even remember if what happened happened, or is just some imaginative part of his psyche filling his mind in. It certainly feels real. The fear hasn’t dissipated since Stan woke up in the hospital, still igniting him, like that’s how he’s destined to live now; in fear, and afraid.

He doesn’t know how to answer the shrinks question, so he doesn’t.

He’s sat in his wheelchair, staring thoughtlessly out the window when he finally gets the courage to ask the questions. He doesn’t need the wheelchair, not really, but he’s still healing and his doctor, a kindly woman whose name he can never remember, insisted he uses it until he’s strong enough. It’s a different place to sit, at least, when he gets sick of being bedbound. He’s not even ill anymore, not really, and he knows that he could be at home, healing the rest of the way. The doctors won’t let him leave though, and his mom never pushes on that, and Stan is itching to know why.

She’s sat in her usual armchair, which has begun moulding to her body shape, flicking absent-mindedly through a book, like she’s barely even reading it. Stan turns his attention away from her, and back to the window, which shows only a patch of expansive sky. If he’s lucky, he’ll see birds sometimes, Yellow-bellied Flycatchers and Gray-cheeked Thrushes, a Dark-eyed Junco if he’s lucky. The same birds he would watch circling from his bedroom window, or when at the quarry with his friends. They don’t look the same from the confines of the hospital ward. They somehow look less free.

“How long do I have to stay here?” He asks his mom, again, for what feels like the third time that day. It’s the one question he’s been able to ask, and he asks it like clockwork. He always gets the same answer.

“Until you’re better.” His mom returns, turning a page in her book. She doesn’t even look up, not when Stan studies her for a few seconds, or when he twists his body away, back towards the window. He’d love to see a Kingfisher, but they don’t fly in this area. They gravitate to water, to streams and becks, not to man-made architecture and sickness.

“Are you going to stay the whole time?” He asks, like he’s asked before. He could beg her to leave, or stare at her blankly till she does. She hates his staring, more than his silence, more than his screaming which comes in the night.

“Of course I am, Stanley,” she responds, playing her part in their daily play.

There’s no birds anymore. They’ve all flown away, from the expanse of grey sky and back towards their nests, and their homes. God, Stan wants to go _home_. “Why do I have to see that shrink? He never says anything. I don’t know what he wants me to say to him.”

She looks up for the first time, hands resting centrefold in her book. “We can find you a new therapist.”

“It’s not him. I don’t want to see anyone.”

His mother ages years when she sighs. Her forehead wrinkles, her eyes strain, and if there was ever anything smooth about her before, she’s lumpy now, as though dealing with Stan has caused her skin to pucker into pouches of flesh.

She doesn’t say anything, though. She always goes silent against resistance.

“I don’t know what you want me to talk to a shrink about,” he rests his hands across his chest. If he presses hard enough, he could re-fracture his healing ribs. Push them until they splinter and crack under his fingers. He would do it, too, if the need for pain wasn’t outweighed by the need to go home.

“Talk about how you’re feeling.”

“I don’t know how I’m feeling.”

He does. It’s numb, and empty, and homesick for a home that hasn’t existed for years. It’s fear, in the base of his throat, a dread at the idea of pain one second and an indifference to it the next. It’s a dizzying sadness and then a crushing hilarity, and it makes no sense.

“I can’t keep anything straight in my mind anymore,” he protests, suddenly tearful and tired. “I can’t concentrate, or tell the time, or- I think it’s broken.”

He swallows thickly after his confession, but he can’t choke it back down. The tears spill and Stan is filled with a sudden compulsion to laugh, then to scream. He moves his hands to his hair, to pull it from his scalp, but his mother lunges out of her chair and catches him in a vice-like grip.

“Oh Stanley…” She’s tearful now, like she has been for weeks. Stan thinks she’s the one who needs the shrink, not him. He’s not depressed, or mad, he just must’ve hit his head when he fell. That’s why he can’t keep anything straight.

“We’ll sort this out, I promise darling. We’re going to sort everything out.”

“When we go home…” His mom draws in a breath, like she does whenever he mentions home. “Will he be there?”

There’s no fear in his tone, and only curiosity in his questioning, but his mom shakes her head vehemently, squeezing his hands tightly. “No, darling, he’s not going to be there.”

She says it fiercely, thickly through her tears, like she’s protecting Stan with her statement. He’s not scared of his father; he is sometimes, but not now. Sometimes he wakes with his father’s voice in his mind, and sometime he flinches from the busyness of the orderlies who change his sheets, but mostly he feels an emptiness that his father isn’t here, and his mother won’t even talk about him.

“Is he coming here? Is he coming to visit?”

“He’s not coming back,” she insists, forcing a smile. “He’s gone, for good. Out of our life and far away.”

“How?” Stan asks. He expects her to back down from the answer, but he’s staring her in the face and there’s nowhere to go, in their small sectioned-off portion of the ward.

“When- after your fall, I knew – we both knew – that he couldn’t hide it – what is wrong with him - anymore. Everyone would find out, the police would find out, there was no hiding from the mess he made anymore. I told him if he left – left and went far away from you, from both of us – I would cover for him. He chose his reputation over us. Ha. When didn’t he?”

She’s laughing to herself, bitter and frightened, a tight laugh that sounds rough. Stan isn’t thinking about his mother, though, with her vice like grip and her mercy for his father. He’s thinking about how the gaping hole in his chest is permanent, and how a part of his life, no matter how horrid, is over forever.

“He’s gone.”

“Yes. Gone forever.”

“Promise?”

He sounds like a child. He feels like a child, his mother knelt before him, dragging his head down into the crook of her neck.

“I promise, Stanley. It’s all over now.”

It doesn’t feel over.

* * *

He ruins Richie’s surprise.

In his defence, he doesn’t mean to. He’s been getting better, getting stronger, with the help of a concoction of medication which would put Eddie to shame. His body is mostly healed, ribs fused and bruises faded, but they still won’t let him go home. It’s his shrinks fault, for telling Stan’s doctors that while he may be physically healthy, he’s mentally still too vulnerable to be left alone. It’s stupid, Stan thinks. The scars on his arms are practically healed by now, and he hasn’t even thought about doing anything else whilst he’s been in here, but they still won’t let him leave.

Instead, he’s moved off his ward and to a different one. It’s a paediatric ward, even though he’s nearly sixteen and the youngest on the ward is seven. Most of them are recurring patients, in for chemo and sickle cell treatments, and the rest of the ward is filled by kids with broken legs and tonsillitis who disappear after a week, ushered out by parents clutching balloons and cards.

Stan doesn’t talk to any of them. They’ve all been coming in for months, and they all know each other, passing books and inside jokes between the beds. They don’t talk to him either, and most of the time he keeps his curtains pulled tightly around his bed, staring at his folded hands, because there’s nothing else to do. He can’t read, the words too fuzzy in his brain, and his supply of schoolwork has dried up now that he can’t even hold a pen. The only window rests at the end of the ward, so he can’t even spend his time watching the meagre populous of birds. He does sit at that window, sometimes, perched on the window ledge, nose practically pressed to the glass to try and see more of them, circling and diving, free.

“What are you looking at?”

Stan recognises the girl by her pyjamas, bright pink and fuzzy, which reflect in the glass. She’s in the bed next to him, and at night he hears her talking in her sleep. It would be endearing, if it weren’t so annoying. He doesn’t answer her question, instead studying the grime on the window pane. It’s filthy, for a hospital.

The girl is undeterred by his silence. “If they find you sat on the window ledge, they may think you’re planning an escape.”

She sounds serious, and her sincerity makes Stan’s lips quirk into a smirk. “You’d die if you jumped from the tenth story,” he replies solemnly, studying her reflection in the window.

Her face contorts into a smile, and she raises one eyebrow. “I didn’t say what kind of escape.”

Stan likes her.

She must take his short laugh as an invitation, because she sits down on the window sill next to him. her hair is pulled into two plaits, and she looks pale, sick as though she actually needs to be in a hospital. She smiles at him, and he tries to return it, but finds he’s lacking the energy, or the care, to actually manage it.

“I’m Barbara,” she says, extended a hand. Stan ignores it and turns back to the window, catching the last glimpse of a Blackpoll Warbler as it soars out of his limited view. Before the hospital, before any of this, he would sit with Bill and watch the Warblers make their nests in the guttering of the Denbrough house. They returned their every year, and they would watch from Bill’s swing set. It’s the first time Stan’s thought about Bill in far too long, but there’s no guilt, just indifference.

“Stanley,” he says, when he realises he hasn’t responded to her.

Barbara hums thoughtfully. “I know. I read your chart,” Stan shoots her a look, but she just grins. “What? I finished my book. Plus, there’s nothing else to do in here. What are you looking at?”

Stan wants to ask why Barbara is here, and why her eyes look so hollowed out, and why she won’t shut up, but instead he just shrugs, and jabs a finger against the glass of the mirror. “Watching the birds.”

“You’re really that bored, huh?” she replies, which makes Stan snort because god, no one has teased him in so long and he’s missed it. He’s missed having people around who don’t treat him like glass.

Barbara grins at him, face contorting a little, as though it’s foreign to her too. Stan itches to ask what’s wrong with her, but instead he spits out a friendly, “shut up.”

He’s allowed out of his room for walks too, unassisted now, and unsupervised. He doesn’t have shoes on, and that is enough to deter him from bolting. Plus, his mother would be upset if she turned up to his bed and found him missing, and all that’s left of him to be bed sheets and medication that he despises taking. It tastes funny, and makes him feel tired all the time. He wonders if he’s been given meds to make him drowsy so he doesn’t run off, or throw himself out of the window at the end of the ward.

He’s been thinking about his father a lot more. He’s been thinking about his friends a lot less.

It’s not that he doesn’t miss them, because he does. He misses everything, how it all was before, when everything was perfect that summer. He thinks about that a lot, the way his palms burnt from his bike’s handles, and how he skinned his knee when Ben knocked him into a tree, and how Eddie had climbed on his back when they trekked past the train track, and shouted at him to ‘charge on!’

He thinks about Bill a lot, too, the way he held Stan’s hand when they ran, and how he wrapped his shirt tight around Stan’s torso when he got sick of carrying it, and how he was always the first to splash Stan in the quarry, before even Richie dared.

He doesn’t think about how they are now, how they’ve been since school began. How they don’t need Stan, or haven’t noticed his absence.

He’d rather not think of them at all.

He’s refilling a repeat prescription when he runs into Richie. At first, he’s confused, because Richie isn’t sick, he doesn’t need medication, so why is he here? Stan is standing at the counter, holding his little white bag of pills, and Richie is in the doorway and he’s holding – is he holding a balloon? A woman clears her throat. Stan knows he’s holding the queue up, but he can’t move.

“Are you going to move or not?” A man’s voice. Stan shuffles towards the exit, towards Richie, fuelled by embarrassment and the way the whole queue is watching him. Richie is just grinning at him, holding the fucking balloon like his happiness doesn’t look so out of place in a hospital.

God. Stan’s not wearing shoes.

He doesn’t have any time to feel awkward about it, because Richie thrusts his arms around Stan’s neck and presses his face against his head, and Stan hadn’t realised how gawky and tall Richie has got until now, glasses pressing uncomfortably into his scalp. Stan would tell him it hurt, if it weren’t for how comforting it feels to have his arms full of Richie, to have his best friend hug him like he’s not about to shatter any minute.

When Richie pulls back, he’s red in the face, and Stan feels close to tears. He hasn’t felt close to anything in weeks, so he looks up to the balloon.

“I haven’t had a baby,” he says blankly, and Richie frowns.

“What?” he asks, and he’s staring at Stan, brow furrowed, like he’s trying to work something out. Richie never looks that concentrated before. Is he trying to work Stan out? Good luck to him.

“The balloon,” Stan gestures to it, and Richie looks up for the first time, noticing the pink pacifier and slogan reading ‘It’s a girl!’

“Oh, yeah,” Richie laughs, like he’s remembering a long forgotten joke. Stan thinks about how much time he’s missed. Months? Years? Time is deceptive in here, and his brain is too foggy to work out dates. “Are you sure you haven’t had a baby? You’ve still got some post-pregnancy weight.”

Stan crosses his hands across his chest instinctively, even though he knows there’s no extra weight there, just bones and skin, and not enough fat to protect his newly mended ribs. His doctor has chastised him about that, about his lack of effort to heal. He has healed. Why can’t he just go home?

He takes Richie up to the visitors lounge just off of the paediatric ward. It’s where his mom comes, when she visits. She’s not here all the time now, busy sorting stuff out back home, busy patching up their lives. Stan doesn’t know how she’s going to fix all this. The whole of Derry probably know what happened now. What happened to Stan.

They sit in two chairs by the window, because Richie wants to smoke. Stan doesn’t protest. He’s missed the smell of the cigarettes.

“Ben asked Beverly to prom,” Richie tells him, like it matters. Junior prom seems so far away to Stan. “She turned him down.”

Richie looks up, as though the news will draw a confession from Stan. He just traces patterns into the arm of the chair, the material sticking beneath his fingers. He knows he should try, that he should at least ask some questions, but all he can think is how his dad hated Richie Tozier, and how his dad isn’t here to protest his visit anymore. He wonders if Richie knows what happened.

“Said that she didn’t feel like dressing up and being paraded around like a puppet. Ben was heartbroken. He’s going with a girl in his Calculus now. She seems nice. Bev fucking hates her,” Richie laughs.

Stan feels hollowed out inside. He can’t fill the silence, so Richie does, playing with the cigarettes between his fingertips. “I haven’t decided who to ask yet. Bev asked me to skip with her, and get high, but I don’t know. I think I’ll look hot in a suit. Wouldn’t want to deny the ladies of that.”

He wiggles his eyebrows, and Stan snorts. Richie is spurred on by the sound. “Eddie’s going. He hasn’t got a date because he won’t grow some balls and ask anyone. Might just go stag. That would be fun enough. Bill isn’t going. Said he doesn’t want to pay for the suit, which is bullshit, because he already has a suit from the funeral.”

Stan’s heart clenches at the thought of Bill. Richie coughs through a cloud of smoke.

“You really shouldn’t smoke in here,” Stan says. The balloon floats dejectedly next to him. His nails are too blunt to pop it. They cut his nails in here.

Richie just quirks an eyebrow. “Are you jealous, Stanley? Do they not let you mix cigarettes and whatever fucking medication it is that you’re on?”

He gestures towards the white bag on Stan’s lap. Stan scowls back at him. “I can smoke on my medication, dickhead. It’s not my lungs that are fucked up.”

“Do your meds have cool side effects? Like superpowers? Do they make your dick huge? Stan, do they make your dick fucking huge?”

“Beep beep Richie,” Stan says. He says it, because he knows it’s what he’s meant to say, and it feels comfortable on his tongue.

Richie’s face breaks into a grin, and he’s laughing, rocking forward in his chair a little. “Fuck, I’ve missed you saying that.”

Stan realises he’s missed saying it too. So, he smiles, pushes it onto his face, and studies Richie. He looks a little older, a hint of stubble clinging to his chin, and god he’ll be fucking thrilled about that. Stan doubts a few months is not enough time for puberty to fully hit the rest of the losers, especially Eddie, so Richie must be so pleased to be one step ahead in something.

Stan wants to ask about Eddie, about everyone. He craves the world he doesn’t belong to anymore. But he can’t choke out the words, and Richie is looking at him, and there’s that _pity_ again, the pity that Stan hates.

“How are your ribs?” Richie asks, stubbing out his cigarette on the window with a small hiss. Stan watches the stub and the ash, and the way the flame dies.

“They’re fine,” he says after a moment, hand ghosting them, checking them for any fractures. “I’m fine.”

“The fact that we’re sat in a hospital says otherwise,” Richie jokes. It falls flat. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands now the cigarette is gone. He presses them between his knees. “How is it… in here?”

“Boring.” He wonders who told Richie about his ribs. His mom, maybe. His dad? Ha. Doubtful. “I’ll be discharged soon,” he says, mainly to himself. Richie doesn’t respond.

“Any hot nurses giving you sponge baths?”

“Shut the fuck up Richie.”

Richie’s guffaws, then stops, like switching a faucet on and off.

“I’m-” he starts. Stops. Drags a hand through his hair which is longer than Stan remembers, dark and shaggy, stopping at his chin. He looks different than Stan remembered in most ways. He’s grown into himself, and the bad shirts are gone, replaced by a dark jumper and jeans ripped down the knees. He looks grown up. Stan feels stuck in childhood, in his pyjamas and no shoes.

“I’m sorry we didn’t come to see you sooner,” Richie says finally. The ‘we’ is baffling. He’s the only one here. “You weren’t allowed visitors for a while, and then your mom didn’t want anyone coming, and then- and then I just didn’t know what to say to you.”

“You didn’t know what to say to me?”

Richie laughs again. “It sounds stupid. I just- never say the right thing when it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to say the wrong thing when it does. Cons of being a trash-mouth.”

Stan looks away. At the balloon, and the way it sags in the middle. They didn’t blow it up right in the gift shop. It’s defective. “I like the balloon.”

“It’s actually meant for little baby Uris. When do I get to meet her?”

“You’re never going to meet my baby, Tozier,” Stan is surprised when his face pulls itself into a smile without any coercing. Richie returns it, wider, more joyous, bouncing in his seat. He isn’t made for rooms like this, for hospitals or funerals. Yet he still came here for Stan.

“How is everyone?” Stan grits out, before he regrets it. He finds he needs to know, even if the idea of thinking about the after, not the before, makes him sick.

“They really wanted to come,” Richie rushes, like an apology he’s been holding back. It makes Stan uncomfortable. “Honest. We were all going to come and surprise you, but when we went to speak to your mom about it she wouldn’t stop going on about hospital policy. One visitor at a time, blah blah. I was like, ‘who gives a fuck about hospital policy? That’s our Stan the Man’. They’re all going to come, though. Separately.”

He pauses, for breath, then adds, “If, uh, that’s what you want.”

“Did they send you in as their sacrifice? To test if I was going to bite your head off?” Stan jokes drily, smiling at the idea of himself as some sort of mythical beast, a dragon or Pegasus, or siren.

Richie doesn’t smile. He shifts in his seat, as though expecting Stan to be mad at him, as though he could be. “Are you going to? Bite my head off?” He asks hesitantly.

“You were… all going to come?” he asks instead, reaching out to rub the string of the balloon between two of his fingers.

“I mean, Eds wasn’t exactly happy about it, you know how he is with hospitals, I’m surprised you haven’t seen him in here honestly, but he wanted to see you more than he cares about Mrs. K, so yeah-”

“Was Bill going to come?” he can’t help himself.

Richie frowns, adjusting his glasses, pressing them against his nose hard enough to leave a dent. “Of course. He’s been really worried; he was the one who suggested we go talk to your mom.”

Of course. Of course it was Bill’s idea, leading the charge on his mom, pushing forward the save Stan crusade even when he can’t bear to look at him, even when he feels too sick to even hold Stan’s hand under the table like they used to do. He hadn’t invited Stan around to watch the Warblers nest this year.

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until Richie says “shit” under his breath and throws himself onto his knees in front of Stan’s chair. He’s sobbing, heaving, body buckling, and he’s still holding onto that stupid balloon.

“He won’t even look at me,” he forces out between sobs, knees instinctively curling up towards his chest. “When I think about him, he’s always so disappointed in me. He doesn’t want to see me. He wouldn’t look at me.” His voice dissolves into tears but Richie doesn’t hug him like his mom would, just rocks back on his heels.

“He’s gonna come see you, I promise. I’ll tell him to come see you,” he says, like that fixes anything.

Stan cries harder, pressing his face against his fingertips, still clutching to the balloon. “No. No, don’t make him come, Richie, he’ll just hate me more.”

It must make no sense to Richie, who blinks at the words, but he nods solemnly like he’s making a vow, and awkwardly pats Stan’s knee, prising his head up. “Okay. I won’t make him come. But I can’t stop him from coming, either.”

Stan nods. He knows Bill won’t come. He won’t see Stan. He’ll disappear like his father.

“Shit, Stan, please don’t tell your mom I made you cry,” Richie laughs, and Stan says what he wants to hear, wiping the remnants of tears from his chin.

“Shut the fuck up Richie.”

* * *

Monotony is tedious.

Stan always thought he would be fine with the repetitive motions of a routine like this. What was so different about his life before? Wake, eat, study, stare, sleep. The only difference now is that there’s no adrenaline in his blood, coursing due to fear. There’s just the numbness, and the nothing.

And there’s no study either. He can hold a pen now, he can write, slowly but steadily, but sums are impossible and his concentration fizzles out after mere minutes. It frustrates him, and there is an abundance of snapped biros in his waste basket from when he tries to write. His sentences tangle together and his words are indistinguishable from the black smudges he makes by pressing his fingers into the ink. Even if he wanted to attempt the homework from his shrink, he couldn’t.

He’s still trying. The idea of admitting defeat, of resigning himself to a life of being unable to write, to do basic subtraction, scares him more than his worse night terror.

His shrink says it’s a side effect; of his fall, or his medication, or his messed up brain, Stanley doesn’t know. All he knows is that his brain feels like it’s been blended, and that his eyes skip over words when he tries to read. It’s perfectly normal according to Doctor Sylvester – Stan can remember his name now – and should clear up after a few months of recovery and adjustment. He always says that, watching Stan carefully over his clipboard with a severity. ‘Adjustment’. He’s suffered mass trauma, Sylvester says, and that his brain is still trying to adjust to his new settings, to his new medication. Sylvester never specifies the trauma. Stan wonders if he knows about his father.

He doesn’t feel fear when he thinks about his father now, and he only sees his face when he’s dreaming. He doesn’t tell Doctor Sylvester about the night terrors, but he must know, because one of Stan’s pills is prescribed to assist with sleeping. It doesn’t work.

He doesn’t tell the doctor about his night terrors, or his father’s face, or the way he’ll drag his blunt nails across his skin when he’s alone, to see if he can still withstand the feeling. Mainly they talk about birds. Doctor Sylvester has a large portrait of a Northern Bald Ibis on his wall, with its beak fully extended, protruding out the frame towards Stan like it’s going to impale him. It’s beautiful.

Stan likes having someone to talk to about birds. Barbara was discharged after three weeks, and Bill still hasn’t visited. Stan doesn’t know whether to be thrilled or distraught. Bill was the only one who would actually listen to him talk about birds. Mike was good at pretending he cared, and Ben would always nod and smile, but Bill was the only one who ever listened.

They’ve all visited him now. Ben brought him a bag of his favourite books, and Stan hadn’t had the heart to tell him that he can’t even read the lunch menu, never mind the words of Tolkien or Le Guin. He had smiled, instead, and hugged the books tight to his chest till the corners of the cover dug into his skin.

Mike had visited too, and he smelt of hay and earth and everything Stan had missed. He was quiet, almost meditative, watching Stan carefully. They had sat in the hospital cafeteria, and Mike had taken his shoes off, to match Stan.

Richie visits the most. Sometimes with Eddie, sometimes with Bev, mostly alone. Stan likes it when he comes alone. He’s full of news, and stories, and for the first time since the summer Stan feels apart of them.

“How long are you going to be here?” Eddie asks Stan, the one time he comes to visit without Richie. They’re sat on Stan’s bed, side by side, Eddie’s feet failing to even scrape the floor. It’s nice to see somethings don’t change.

Stan shrugs, grounding his toes into the floor. “They won’t say.”

“But… you’re fine,” Eddie glances up to him, eyes tracing his body, then looks away. “Right? I mean, you don’t look sick.”

Another shrug. “I guess the sickness is on the inside.”

He does talk to his Sylvester about when he can get out of hospital, when he can go home. He just watches him for a long while, as Stan turns a pen between his fingertips, then runs a hand over his face. It’s unsanitary, but Stan doesn’t point it out.

“Unfortunately it’s not possible at the moment, Mr Uris,” he says. Stan supresses a scowl, and instead watches him neutrally. “There’s a lot of steps left in this healing process. It’s more complicated than just healing a few cracked ribs and internal bleeding.”

He makes everything sound so severe.

“It’s my brain too. right?”

“Not so much. Your mind, definitely. Your brain seems to be doing just fine.”

“I can’t read. I can’t write, or do math, or think straight.”

“You seem to be thinking alright to me, Mr Uris.” It’s a stupid statement. The shrink doesn’t know what’s happening in his head, with all its cartwheeling and skipping and stupid night terrors.

“Why won’t you call me Stanley?”

“Is that what your father used to call you?”

They haven’t talked about his father before. Stan was starting to think he’s living in a parallel world where fathers don’t exist.

“It’s what my mom calls me. It’s what everyone calls me.”

“Not Stan?”

“I’d prefer either to Mr Uris.”

“And I prefer to maintain a professional air in my office. Especially with patients who don’t want to be seeing me.”

“It’s not personal.”

“Everything’s personal, Mr Uris,” he cracks a smile. Wolf-like. Stan wonders whether he’s going to try to eat him, but then he’s moving round his desk, leaning against the edge of it. “You’ll be in here for a little longer. The ‘why’ is mostly out of your control right now. Just keep taking your medication and doing the exercises I set. That’s all you can do.”

* * *

“Richie told me you turned Ben down. Harsh.”

They’re sat on Stan’s bed, facing one another. Bev’s legs are folded neatly over one another, and her knees have been scraped to death and are a mix of black dust and the dark red of dried blood in cracked skin. Stan wants to reach out and push on the cut till she screams. He doesn’t, god, of course he doesn’t.

She’s wearing a leather bomber jacket today, and it reeks of weed and it’s two sizes too big, but she looks cool. Bev earns him some street cred in the hospital, with the older boys peering round the side of his tightly-drawn curtains to catch a glimpse of her. Stan understands the feeling.

He always feels a little inferior when Bev rocks up, sat in his blue plaid pyjamas. She never laughs at him. He’s grateful for that.

She cried the first time she’d visited, so hard she had two lines cut clean through her foundations. Stan didn’t know how to comfort her, so he’d let her cry the guilt out and then comforted her when she said it was all her fault.

“It’s prom,” Bev replies, pulling a face. She peers curiously at the cards fanned in Stan’s hand, then at her own hand. “Give me your queens.”

“Go fish,” Stan replies without looking down. He’s memorised his deck. Sylvester told him it was good for his brain to try simple maths, and apparently that means the card games for five year olds. Whatever. “Do you have any fives? I thought you liked Ben.”

Bev hands over a card. “I do, I do. I just really don’t like prom.”

“You’ve never been,” Stan eyes her over his deck.

She sighs and lays her cards in her lap. “I’ve never been eaten by sharks before either, and I’m pretty sure that would be an unenjoyable experience.”

Stan presses a smirk down into the corners of his mouth, but Bev laughs anyway. She’s never self-conscious when she laughs, and it makes Stan laughs too, pressing his head against the cards in his hands.

“I don’t know, maybe I should’ve said yes. It’s so awkward now, and the girl Ben asked won’t stop hanging around with us. She sits at our table now. In your seat,” Bev says it with contempt.

“I don’t mind,” Stan says. He does mind.

“She’s so infuriating,” Bev continues without pause. “Richie says he likes her, but he just thinks she’s cool because she laughs at his jokes. So what? I could pretend to find him funny too, but his jokes fucking suck. I know Mike agrees with me, but he’s always so diplomatic. He’s asked someone too. She seems alright.”

“Richie said you were gonna skip?” Stan reshuffles his deck, trying to get the game going again, but Bev tilts her head back.

“I asked him to skip with me, but he’s under this pretence that prom is gonna be the defining moment of high school. I pointed out that the defining moment of high school will be that time he jumped and head-butted that door frame, but he just told me to shut up.”

“Maybe he’s trying to pop his cherry,” Stan suggests drily, which makes Bev snort.

“No one’s going to fuck him unless he actually takes a shower.”

Stan laughs, feeling kind of bad taking the piss out of Richie without him present to return the jabbing, or defend himself.

“It’s fine,” Bev waves off dismissively, picking up her deck. “Bill’s agreed to skip. We’ll just have to come celebrate prom with you.”

Stan forces down the lump in his throat, because Bill hasn’t been to see him in the hospital since his breakdown to Richie, and he’s not going to come on prom night. “Do you have any twos?”

“Go fish,” Bev says, then leans in conspiratorially, “How’s therapy?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?” She whisper-prompts. “Doctor Syl-whatshisface actually said anything yet?”

Stan shrugs. “He’s not too bad. We talk about birds. Why are you whispering?”

Bev’s the only Loser he’s told about Doctor Sylvester, but everyone else on the ward knows about his daily trips by now. She shoots him a severe look.

“I know you don’t want people to know.”

“Do,” Stan swallows again. “Do people know?”

“People in Derry?” she asks, then doesn’t wait for his answer. “Fuck no. There was a rumour going around that you were dead. Eddie blew his top, started yelling at Greta, it was fucking awesome. Now people just think you’ve got like, cancer or some shit.”

“And you haven’t corrected them?”

Bev fixes him with another look. “Why would I? It’s none of my business. It’s no one’s business. Give me your sevens.”

“Go fish.”

* * *

He sits in the visitor’s room when his mom visits. She comes at 3PM each day, just after his therapy sessions, which means he’s always drained and just wants to sleep. On Friday’s she visits for dinner, which they eat in the canteen, facing one another, Stan’s feet crossed beneath the table.

But it’s Wednesday – Stan thinks – so she’s waiting in the visitor’s lounge when he shuffles in from therapy, face pinched like always. Stan doesn’t know what’s so exhausting about his sessions, as it seems to be mainly not talking and mediocre questions that seem pointless. They’ve started talking about his father now. Doctor Sylvester had emphasised that he wasn’t a cop beforehand, and that patient-doctor confidentiality extends unless he’s in danger, which he isn’t anymore.

Stan couldn’t bring himself to talk about his father, other than mentioning the apple tree they planted in his back garden. Still, he’s exhausted, and collapses into a chair in front of his mother.

He lets her talk for a while. She has boundless energy, it seems, talking about their neighbour and what his cousins have been up to and the news like everything hasn’t changed. Stan wonders how his mom can stand to go out anymore. Does she feed into the cancer rumours too? How does she explain where her husband has gone? Does everyone know?

“Hospitals cost a lot of money,” Stan says bluntly, cutting her off mid-sentence. He’s been mulling over the idea for a while, yet can’t pull it more into a coherent thought than that blank statement.

His mom pauses, mouth opening and closing like she’s gasping for air. “Yes,” she settles on eventually. “They do. That’s why people have insurance.”

“But it only covers emergencies, and vital stays, most of the time, and I’m fine. Physically, the doctors said I’m fine,” he doesn’t know what he’s arguing, but his voice is dangerously whiny and his mother is sat on the edge of her chair, like she needs to catch him.

“I know, but Doctor Gilligan thinks you should stay here a bit longer-”

“I don’t want to stay here longer!” His voice climbs miserably, and he can feel the eyes of the other people in the room staring at him. There are tears gathering in his eyes, and he wipes at them hastily, then moves his hands to grip harshly at his own hair. “I want to go home!”

He expects his mother to soothe him, but she just sits back and nods distractedly. “Okay.”

Stan looks up to her, hands easing out of his hair and falling to his side. “What?”

“Okay Stanley. We can go home,” she says like it’s simple, shrugging. “I’m listening to you. I didn’t before, I didn’t listen to anyone, and now I’m listening to you, and I’m trusting you. You have to keep taking your meds, and you have to come in for consultations, and you have to trust what I say, because I’m trusting you. Okay?”

Stan nods. He thought he would feel something at the idea of going home, of being free, but all he feels is prickly numbness, spreading through his bones like treacle. He wants morphine, he craves it, and the way it makes everything feel easy.

No. He can’t think about that. He’s going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has really run away with me. It was just meant to be a side bar project and I've spent more time on it then my multi-chapter fics. Anyway, there's only one more chapter left. Hope you enjoyed!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Bill still hasn’t been to see him. It probably means nothing – Stan’s too empty to make it mean anything – so he hasn’t asked. Maybe Bill stopped breathing in the middle of the night without Stan watching over him.
> 
> There are no birds in the sky. They’re migrating, far away from Derry. There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign in his front garden. Soon Stan will be migrating too."

The house is different.

It’s cleaner, more clinical, and the air is sour with bleach like the carpets have been bleached with it. Maybe they have. There’s no smell of tangy blood, no scuff marks on the wall from when He backhanded Her so hard her head had hit the plaster wall and part of the paint had chipped away with the force. The floorboards don’t even creak under foot anymore. The whole house has been sterilised, fingerprints and flaked skin scrubbed clean.

The stairs are the first thing you see, and they’re the first thing Stan sees too, brooding over him when he tentatively unhooks the door and pushes it open. They’re taller than he remembers, and darker too, as though the flickering light bulb hanging above can barely even light the expanse anymore. Stan knows – he knows – if he pushes up the stairs he’ll find his room, and His room, and the bathroom, and they’ll be as immaculate as ever. But he can’t push up the stairs because his body stops him in the doorway.

The living room is to his left. The kitchen too. Conservatory and study to the right. The garden out back, with its apple tree, and the birds. Stan’s sure he left his binoculars wrapped around the birdhouse. He would go out back and check, but he can’t stop looking at the stairs, and where the carpet tears just a little at the corner. It’s frayed, too. The only imperfection in a perfect house.

She eases him forward by the elbow. He jerks away, and She lets him. His case is in Her hand and it’s scoring violent red lines into her skin. Stan blinks at the lines, then at the stairs, then at the spot where there used to be family photos. The wall is smooth and unblemished now.

“Maybe you should unpack.”

She worries Her front lip when she says it. Stan swallows. He nods. He takes his case which is mostly filled with different orange tubes, each with a different purpose. He has pyjamas in there too. Fourth grade maths problems. The books Ben lent him. The stench of the hospital. She can’t bleach that off his skin.

She’s sterilised his bedroom too. He barely recognises it. It smells like bleach and lemons, and his bed is made. There are clothes rotting in his laundry basket. No one has lived here for a while.

He starts with the orange tubes, lining them up along his desk. He can’t remember what each of them does. Dr Sylvester keeps an ordered list of the different one’s they’re trying, the combinations, how much he’s eating, how much he sleeps, his weight. Dr Sylvester gave him a new tube before he was discharged, said he’d see how it was working at Stan’s next session. If it’s meant to make his hands feel detached from his arms and his brain unable to distinguish faces, it’s working.

He lies down on the made bed and folds his hands over his stomach. He looks like a corpse. He doesn’t feel like one, his skin is rippling too much for that, moving in waves like the ocean. He tries to remember the ocean, but all he can think of is the quarry, and the bath, and the look of rain on the hospital windows. Dr Sylvester said his success was measured in how far he moved away from bad thoughts. He doesn’t have those anymore. He just has disconnected thoughts that he’s too tired to question. Maybe that’s why he was discharged.

When he wakes up the air smells like lemons, and bleach, and pie. The thick crusted, sweetened kind that rots your teeth in your face and makes your eyes sting with its acidity. When Stan thinks about home he thinks about that pie his mom makes, and how she whistles when she makes it. She’s whistling now, the sound sharp through her chipped tooth. It’s one of her front too, and it makes Stan wince whenever he sees it, but his mom still smiles anyway, like she doesn’t care about the broken bone in the centre of her face.

The nap has given him enough energy to unpack the rest of his things, folding the clothes neatly, and pushing the bulk of the case under his bed. It indents on the carpet and Stan follows it, pressing his nose against the soft, coarse material. He squints under the bed.

‘No monsters lurking,’ he thinks. It makes him hysterical. There are tears in his eyes as he howls against his palm, muting the sound. If he wanted to, he could drag his face against the carpet until it tears and bleeds. It would be easy from his angle, if he got the power driven through his legs, which he could do if he wanted to. The idea doesn’t repulse, but it doesn’t appeal either, so he lets his body crumple like a ragdoll. His stomach hurts from laughing anyway.

From here you can see the sky. It’s not blue, like it was the day he shared an ice cream with Ben on the steps of Derry library. It’s not black either, like the day with the untied shoelaces and bath water and a backhand that made Her scream and made Him howl.

It’s grey, a smoky, foggy grey like the day he camped out in Bill’s backyard. Three weeks after the funeral and Bill hadn’t said more than two words to him all day, but that didn’t matter because he’d helped Stan assemble the tent and had eaten the snacks he’d brought and he’d slept, soft little snores puncturing the silence. Stan hadn’t slept – someone had to keep an eye on Bill.

Bill hadn’t stopped breathing in the night, and he’d never said he wanted to again, and he smiled every time Stan reminded him of the night in the tent, breath foggy against the tarp ceiling.

Bill still hasn’t been to see him. It probably means nothing – Stan’s too empty to make it mean anything – so he hasn’t asked. Maybe Bill stopped breathing in the middle of the night without Stan watching over him.

There are no birds in the sky. They’re migrating, far away from Derry. There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign in his front garden. Soon Stan will be migrating too.

* * *

“I think we should consider readmission to hospital,” Dr Sylvester clicks his pen against the side of his clipboard repeatedly. They’re sat in the comfy chairs, two swamping armchairs in a hideous blue shade, just to the side of the Oakwood desks. Stan finds himself perched on the edge, whilst the Doctor sinks fully into his seat, frown increasingly deepening with everything Stan says.

“What about school?”

“I don’t think you should worry about all that right now,” Dr Sylvester waves his hand dismissively. Stan knows already that he’s repeating the grade next year, even though he could scrape B’s and C’s with all his previous effort. It was another thing which was decided without him, by his mother and psychiatrist, whilst he ran a bath till it overflowed or straightened the comforter on his bed for the seventieth time that day.

“I don’t want to go back to hospital. I can’t go back to hospital.”

“It would be a different hospital,” Dr Sylvester clicks his pen again. “Something more suited to your _needs_.” He says needs like Stan is an untrained dog who just peed on his office floor.

“I don’t need to go back. You can’t make me go back.”

Dr Sylvester surveys him over the top of his glasses. His hair is thinned on the top of his head, and he’s shaved off his beard and somehow he looks older. He looks sharper, too, just like Him, eyes glinting. He has Stan where he wants him, has him begging for something he has no control over. If Dr Sylvester wants him locked away it will be done, and his mother will be the one to snap the key in half. Stan’s done everything he’s asked – taken the medicine, kept up his routine, the stupid maths problems, he’s slept and he’s not cried and he’s not hurt himself. _He’s been good._

“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. How are you feeling, Stanley?”

He mulls the question over. “The same.”

“Could you expand on that?” Dr Sylvester says that a lot. Always wanting him to expand, to elaborate, to articulate. He’s got Stan keeping a journal. Mostly he writes about birds he sees on his walks. Last week he found a dead one, a Rock Dove, bloodied on the side of the road.

“The same I felt when you asked five minutes ago. And two days ago. And last week.”

“And what is that?”

“I still feeling nothing.”

“Did the change in medication help?”

When his mom told Dr Sylvester about the way Stan hadn’t even flinched when touching the hot pie tin, burning the skin from his left palm, he had adjusted his medication. He still feels detached, but he doesn’t do things like that anymore.

“No. A little.”

“Your mother says you’ve been going on lots of walks.”

He has. He likes walking. He knew Derry before, but he knows it better now, the way it runs like a grid, tilts then falls. Sometimes he walks past his friends’ houses, haunts them like a ghost, watching a curtain twitch or a light flick off. He doesn’t know if they see him. He doesn’t see them.

“Does walking help, Stanley?”

“I guess.”

“Do you not like being at home?”

This is how Dr Sylvester asks about Him – abstract, and pointed. Intrusive questions from a curious point, waiting for Stan to break, stitches splinting. He’s stronger than that. Dr Sylvester wears a Star of David around his neck – did he ever come to His temple? Did he ever meet Him? Did he know then, the monster beneath the layers of respectability?

“We won’t be there much longer.”

“Have you found a therapist in Atlanta yet? I can recommend some excellent physicians in the area,” Dr Sylvester doesn’t smile. Instead his mouth thins into a wide line, like someone has underlined his nose. His thin mouth matches his thinning hair. He leans forward a little. Stan wonders if his doctor friends are at all like him, just with a Georgia accent. He tries to imagine Dr Sylvester with a southern accent. He can’t.

“My mother’s handling that.”

“Have you spoken to anyone other than me or your mother recently, Stanley? Had any visit from friends? A girlfriend, maybe? Surrounding yourself with loved ones when you’re struggling is especially important,” Dr Sylvester is staring at him. His mother stares at him like this too as he washes the dishes or lays in the grass outside. Just like how Bev stared at him that night with the blood in the bath. How Ben stared at him in homeroom. Bill at the lunch table.

He can’t stand their staring. No one was supposed to notice him.

“No. I haven’t seen anyone.”

* * *

Stan is laying on his stomach on the sun lounger, arms hanging from either side. His fingertips touch the grass, scraping over it. It tickles his fingers and embeds under his blunt nails. Even if his mother didn’t trim them twice a week Stan would have bitten them down to stumps.

He’s watching a ladybird pull itself up a leaf. It could just fly out of the messy lawn in the Uris’ front garden but it doesn’t. Instead it crawls pathetically, wiggling half-heartedly until it edges itself off the leaf and onto a blade of glass.

Stan reaches for his glass, ice rattling and melting. It’s sweet and tart on his tongue. He was sure he’d poured water from the tap but instead he tastes his mom’s lemonade in the back of his throat. She’s not here, which is why Stan had dragged her sun lounger onto the front yard. If she were here she’d be making him do his homework for Dr Sylvester, or practise his reading or do something. Without her here Stan is content to do nothing.

He reaches through the grass, determined to catch the ladybird but it crawls across his thumb and into the depths of the grass. It could fly away. It doesn’t. Stan presses his chin to the lounger, sun baking his back through his shirt. It’s not even his shirt – instead it’s a faded green T-Shirt Bill had left in Stan’s backpack years ago. He’s been meaning to give it back.

He sees the shoes first. He squints at them, the mud clumped around the toe and heels. They don’t belong to his mother, or Dr Sylvester, or to Stan himself. He looks up, body moving up with his eyes. Richie looks down at him, lips slightly parted, like he’s seen a mildly unsettling sight. Stan had forgotten he existed. He knows he did exist at some point in the past, but that existence seemed to stop the moment Stan was discharged. For the past weeks the only people in the world had been him, his mom and Dr Sylvester.

Now Richie. And Mike, stood to his left, shuffling and smiling.

“Hey Stan,” Mike raises a hand. Richie stares. Stan stares back.

Inside the house Stan pours them both glasses of lemonade. He left the jug out on the counter so the ice has melted and the lemonade itself is tepid, but they both take their glasses. Mike sips hesitantly. Richie sets his down, the sound booming in the silence. Stan winces and tips the rest of the ruined lemonade into the sink.

They’re staring at him. Stan reaches for a plate which is drying in the dish rack and scrubs at it with a cloth. He starts a pile of plates, drying each one immaculately, plunging his hands into the soapy water. His knuckles brush against a lemon from the jug of lemonade.

“How are you, Stan?” Mike starts. His voice is gentle. He sips at the tepid lemonade again. The plates chatter as Stan sets another one down.

“I’m good, thank you Mike. How are you?” His voice sounds artificial in his own ears. He starts drying bowls, piles them on top of the plates.

Mike doesn’t answer, not at first. Stan watches from the corner of his eye as he glances at Richie, then the table. He laces his fingers together. “Yeah. I’m alright.”

“Fucking stop,” Richie huffs out. Normally when he huffs he sounds like a petulant child throwing another tantrum before bedtime. Now he sounds stern, and wearied. Mike keeps watching the table. Stan starts to dry the cutlery. “Can you both stop acting so polite and… fucking formal?”

Stan reaches for a fork. There’s two in the holder, not three like before. They glint in the sun and they’re hot to his touch.

“Okay,” Stan says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Mike doesn’t say anything. Richie huffs again. “What would you like to talk about? Is there something I can help you with?”

He knows he’s said the wrong thing when Richie laughs and slams his fist against the table. Mike jumps. He stops looking at the table and looks at Richie, face contorting into a pantomimed frown. Stan doesn’t flinch. He puts the forks down and reaches for the knives next. This is how you don’t get hurt. This is how you make sure everything stays normal.

(It’s just a normal dinner, with a normal family.)

(There’s soap in his hair. Sink water, too.)

(How long can a human go without moving? Not long enough.)

“What the fuck Stanley? What the fuck?” Richie sounds like he’s about to cry, but that can’t be right. Stan scrubs harder at the knives until they start to gleam and burn in his hand. “You don’t get to fucking – disappear and then act like this!” Richie gestures to him, arms waving erratically.

“Richie, come on…” Mike has a hand on Richie’s shoulder. They’re both stood up now, staring at Stan, watching him scrub and scrub and scrub.

“I got discharged.” The words hiss through his teeth.

“You could’ve told us! We’ve been there every day the past two weeks! No one would tell us what was going on, we thought you’d fucking – fucking,” Richie’s voice is thick with snot.

(“Don’t cry Stanley, you know how much I hate cry-babies.”)

“We were worried, Stan,” Mike takes a step forward and so does Stan, back pressing against the metal of the sink.

“They wouldn’t even tell us if you were still there or if – Eddie thought you were dead. He said the last time he went to visit you said something about that last day in the quarry and how you wished you’d swum to the bottom and stayed there. Said you fucking terrified him. He was there too, you know, even though he hates hospitals. Bev won’t stop crying, thinks everything’s her fault because she didn’t tell someone sooner. And Bill, he hasn’t left, he cycles there every day before and after school. He tried to speak to your doctor, Syl-whatver but he couldn’t because of doctor patient confidentiality or whatever the fuck they’re calling it. Me and Mike came here last week but your mom wouldn’t open the door and the light in your room wasn’t on and there’s a fucking ‘For Sale’ sign in your yard for shits sake. You could’ve just told us you were discharged, Jesus Christ, did you want us all to think you were six feet under? What the fuck is wrong with-”

“Shit, Stan,” Mike hisses.

He hadn’t even noticed the blade of the knives eating into his skin. There’s a small line of blood dotted across his torn palm. Mike takes his hand and eases the knives from it. They clatter on the draining board.

“It’s not too deep,” Mike says, examining the cut, holding it up to the light. Richie just watches them, jaw slackened, until Mike shoots him a sharp look. “Richie, come here and hold his hand up. I’m going to find something to stop the bleeding.”

“I can hold my own hand up,” Stan protests, but Richie is already elevating his hand. He doesn’t look at the cut, or at Stan, instead watching the faucet dripping.

Mike smiles at him, a wobbly smile. “There’s Stan Uris. Airing cupboard?”

“Upstairs.”

“I’m sorry.”

Richie isn’t looking at Stan. He’s looking at the jagged teeth of the cut, at the smeared red across his palm. It smarts like hell, and he’ll definitely have to go for a tetanus shot at the hospital, but right now he just focuses on Richie’s hand around his wrist.

“Don’t apologise.”

“But all that shit I said-”

“You meant it.”

There’s no answer to that, no way for Richie to smart his way out of that. He sounds mournful when speaks. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

There’s no answer to that either. Richie had said it, and he had meant it ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ That’s what he was going to say. Stan wouldn’t have had an answer if he did say it.

Richie is still holding his hand up, fingers wrapped tightly around Stan’s wrist. The blood has smeared a little and now has a ghostly outline. The knives on the draining board are spotted with blood. Soon the sun will start baking it and it will rot – Stanley knows what rotted blood smells like.

“Why didn’t you tell us? When you got discharged?”

“Nothing’s going to go back to normal,” Stan says. Richie scoffs, and looks up to meet his eyes.

“Yeah. No shit.”

“No I mean – we’re moving. Not just house. To Georgia.”

Richie doesn’t look sad, just contemplative as he nods. “Yeah. I figured.”

“I have cousins there. Mom thinks it’ll do us good,” Stan doesn’t think it will. He can’t imagine Georgia being that different to Maine. It’s not the place that’s shitty, it’s the people – well, some of them.

He can’t stop thinking about the way his uncle gets after a drink, and the way his aunt flinches when a cupboard door gets slammed.

“I’d move too, if I’d put up with the shit you have,” Richie shifts his hold on Stan’s wrist until Stan finally just yanks it away from him and holds it up himself. Richie grins grimly and pulls himself onto the counter, legs swinging. “Ya’ll are gonna have the dandiest of times in Yankee ‘Merica Mista Stanley.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You should,” Richie insists earnestly. “You deserve a new start. New places, new faces.”

“I don’t want new faces. I want the old ones back.”

Richie swings his legs back and forth, stopping before they collide with the cupboard doors. There’s no sign of Mike yet. Part of Stan wonders if he’s just loitering outside the kitchen waiting for the two of them to make amends. He’s going to miss Mike. He’s going to miss all his friends. Especially-

“I didn’t lie, Stan,” Richie blurts out. Stan looks up, blinking in confusion. “Bill really has been at the hospital every day.”

“Don’t,” his mouth says automatically, to save his heart the trouble of false hope. Bill didn’t come to the hospital. Bill wouldn’t look at him before. Bill wasn’t there in the night to make sure he didn’t stop breathing. “I don’t want to talk about him,”

“He really cares about you,” Richie’s insists, but Stan has already looked away to where Mike bustles into the kitchen, bucket of water in his hand and towel thrown over his shoulder. He takes Stan’s hand and gently guides it to the bucket. It smarts like hell.

“I thought I told you to keep his hand elevated, Richie,” Mike scolds as he gently cleanses Stan’s cut.

“I did!” Richie protests, pulling himself down from the counter. “You know there’s no reasoning with Stan the Man.”

Mike smiles gently up at Stan. His hands are coarse but gentle. “Ain’t that the truth.”

* * *

When Stan has nightmares, he walks.

He was used to the three o’clock nightmares in the hospital, the shaky start and the soaking sweat that came with them. He got used to his terrors silently when he was first at home, and then silently in the hospital, not wanting to make a mockery of himself amongst the tonsillitis and appendicitis kids. The first night home he finds himself clenching his jaw to cut off a scream, then faltering halfway through and letting out a guttural cry.

His mom insisted on holding him through the hiccupping sobs. He learnt it was still best to keep quiet.

Now when his dreams wake him he takes a late night stroll. It’s easy to climb from the window to the canopy and then to the pavement below and Stan can do it without faltering now. He wonders, sometimes, whether Bill would be proud of him, like Stan always was when he’d watch Bill scale trees and, once, Ben’s garage.

Derry is at its quietest in the small hours of morning, when the noise has died away and the lights switched off in every window. There are no street lights in the suburban streets, only in the town’s 20-foot strip of bars, so Stan carries his wind up torch from scouts. It’s a little cracked, and the handle will sometimes refuse to budge, but it illuminates well enough for his midnight strolls. Most nights he wanders the lattice streets, crosses across the park, and back, down the alley which crosses Eddie’s backyard and round the stream until he’s home, panting but nightmares gone, sun rising.

Once he went to the barrens, scaling the dip in its side and finding himself by the lip of the river, following to where it opens and give way to the quarry. He wishes to splash the water over his skin until the sheen of sweat from his night terrors dissipates. Instead he thinks about the droplets from the faucet as Bev had cleaned the blood from his nose.

He sees Patrick in the Barrens. He doesn’t come near, but he does wave. His teeth glint like a wolf’s. Why doesn’t he come near? Isn’t he an animal that can smell fear? Doesn’t Stan fear anymore?

Maybe not. Fear is tiring.

He walks during the day, too. His mom can’t know about the midnight adventures – dealing with Stan as he is already makes her too sad – and she gets upset if he doesn’t leave the house at least once a day. He finds himself going on walks just to appease her.

He does like the walking, though. He still hasn’t dragged his bike out from the shed, and his body is still too exhausted to run, so walking is his best mode of travel. Not that it’s fast. Maybe it’s the medication making his body feel like led, or maybe it’s the three hours of sleep he’s running on.

He rips the branches off the apple tree. Fruit won’t grow anymore.

He’s learnt to close the front door softly when he is coming and going, coming and going, ghosting in and out of existence between his walks and his appointments and the downturned corners of his mother’s mouth. He’s learnt how to hold the doors edge and ease it shut. Learnt how to press his palm against the glass so it doesn’t vibrate in its frame. Learnt how to peel off his shoes, and his coat, and not touch the handrail of the stairs as he ascends.

He does it all, but she still hears. She’s waiting on the third step, arms embracing her legs, mouth downturned. Stan’s pocket rattles with new pills and his hand crinkles with a discharge letter. Two months in hospital, one not, and he is no longer Dr Sylvester’s worry.

His mom is ghosting, too, on the bottom of the staircase. Fading in and out of his peripheral as he peels off his shoes, his coat, and smooths the letter out on their side table.

“Hey sweetheart,” she says, voice whistling through the corners of her mouth. “Have you had a good day?”

His father used to ask him that at the dinner table. Would call him champ and stiffen his lips, eyes shining. His father used to be the one to ask about his day. They all used to do things in the day – not just echo in the emptiness of the house, which was officially sold to a couple from Indiana two days ago.

He extends the letter to her. She takes it from his hands and picks at the corner as she reads it. Her face contorts again. “I was thinking of clearing the loft out tomorrow,” she whistles again. she doesn’t move from the stairs, and Stan doesn’t fight his way around. “See what we want to take to the new house, and what we can take to Goodwill.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Yeah,” she laughs breathily. She smooths her skirt as she stands up and as she passes she squeezes his shoulder. Her nails dig into his flesh momentarily.

(There was a bruise there, once. A purple angry bruise that Bev had lent her head against until Stan had hissed at the pain. He’d said he’d thrown his shoulder out shovelling snow from his driveway.)

“Maybe you could give me a hand?” his mother suggests, voice a false tone. “We could order pizza after. Or go see a movie, maybe. There’s a new horror bill showing at the Aladdin?”

She’s trying too hard. Stan can tell in the way her eyes strain and crease at the edges.

“Okay. Sure,” he says. The handrail shakes as he holds it. The stairs groan as he climbs them. He doesn’t tell his mother about the new prescription in his pocket.

* * *

Stan has been so caught up in the absence of Bill, of Bill not coming to see him that when he opens the door and sees Bill stood on his doorstep he nearly slams the door in his face.

He doesn’t though. Slamming the door would require lightning speed reaction, and some emotional comprehension that Bill is stood on his doorstep, smiling at him, knees scraped red raw. Stan doesn’t have that. What he does do, however, is lay his hand flat against his forehead to check if he’s feeling feverish. If anything his head feels a little cold. Probably from standing with the door open and not wearing anything other than sleep shorts and a t-shirt.

He expects Bill to say something, but he doesn’t. His mouth is open; like he was going to speak but decided better of it. Stan thinks maybe he should thank Bill, for camping out at the hospital for him, or for convincing Stan’s mom to let them see him in the first place, but he doesn’t.

“Huh-hey,” Bill sounds breathless. Silver shines through the grass of the Uris front lawn, despite the fact that it’s overcast and raining in a misty sort of way. Bill’s still wearing shorts though, knees scraped to hell. His legs are covered with yellowing bruises; the kind you get from falling off your bike or down the trunk of a tree. Richie told him they went to the barrens three days ago – is that where the scrapes came from?

“Do you want to come in?”

Bill shuffles a little, as though expecting Stan to leave him marooned on the doorstep in the beginnings of a rainstorm. Maybe he should leave him out here, as some sort of payback. Stan doesn’t have the heart for payback.

“I pruh-prbably shouldn’t. I duh-duh-don’t think your mom luh-likes me all that muh-much,” Bill laughs. He’s rocking back on his heels, hands jammed back into his pockets.

The quip comes without Stan even thinking about it. “That’s not true. It’s Richie she doesn’t like.”

He doesn’t know what he expects. Bill to laugh again, maybe, or to smile or nod in recognition. Instead he stares at Stan – the first stare that doesn’t go straight through him but instead focuses on his eyes, holding his gaze steady. Stan stares back defiantly.

He’s sick of looking away.

“I a-always thought that was yuh-your dad,” there’s grating anger in Bill’s tone that makes Stan wince.

“My mom’s not in.”

* * *

“Duh-do you tuh-take all of these?”

Stan is too busy smoothing the comforter beneath his fingers to see what Bill is looking at. It’s weird, unnerving, him being here, in Stan’s bedroom, in his house. It’s still too quiet, but Bill hadn’t tiptoed on the stairs or hesitated from pushing the creaking door shut behind him with a soft thud.

Stan looks up to where Bill is crouched in front of his desk. He’s looking at the neat row of orange bottles which teeter on its edge. He doesn’t look saddened by them, just curious as he picks up the third one and squints at the label.

“No. They’re just for decoration,” Stan smiles at Bill’s snort, running his fingers against the soft fabric of the bed. It should be weirder with Bill here, but it’s not. It’s comforting. It’s the first time in months when Stan’s heart isn’t thrumming in his chest.

“What duh-do they all duh-duh-do?” Bill sets the bottle down. Stan pulls himself up from the bed to pick it up again. He turns it over in his hand.

“Stabilise my brain, mostly,” that’s what they’re meant to do. Sometimes Stan wonders whether they’re working because he’s never felt left stable, clinging to foundations which keep moving and shifting. “Apparently I have brain trauma. I had a- I had a fall, and I get these chronic headaches because of it, so my doctor put me on this, but it made me really antsy so he put me on something for that. They think I’ve got depression, so there’s some that just haze me out. Stop me from doing things I’ll regret later.”

He looks up from where he’s scraped the label from the bottle and to Bill, still crouched in front of the neat line of pills. He expects him to look scared. He just looks meditative.

They’re not all that grim, though. There’s some to help me sleep, too. I’m pretty sure this one is for hay fever.” He sets the bottle down back in place and clamps his mouth shut. It’s the most he’s said to anyone in months.

(The most he’s said to Bill since before.)

Bill nods, deliberately and thoughtfully. His eyes scan the rest of the bottles, then he cracks a grin and looks up at Stan. “I thuh-think y-your collection would rival Uh-Eddie’s.”

“Well, when he comes over we normally compare,” Stan returns drily, and Bill diverts his grin to the floor. He pulls himself up using the desk. Stan expects him to sit on the bed, or the chair in the corner of the room. Instead he wanders past him and toward the window.

“Duh-do you do them a l-lot?” Bill asks suddenly. Stan is watching him (well, his back) as he stares out the window. When he speaks he turns around and presses his back against the edge of the frame, staring at Stan again. Staring and seeing.

“What?”

“Things yuh-you regret later,” He’s still smiling but it seems to stretch at his face uncomfortably.

“Not as much as people seem to think,” Stan presses his own back against the wall next to his desk, the closest expanse of wall to the door. “I used to. Not so much anymore, since the medication and the shrink and the-”

“Bastard father running away like a coward?” It’s the first thing Bill has said that wasn’t carefully deliberating on first. “Suh-sorry.”

“My granny and grandpa were married for five years before they had children,” Stan jokes in return, voice shaking at the effort of the wit.

“I am sorry,” Bill pushes forward sincerely. He’s still staring, but it softens into a bashful gaze. Stan feels Bill’s embarrassment heat his own cheeks. “I shouldn’t have brought him up.”

“It’s nice, actually. People don’t talk about him, which is nice, but it was starting to make me feel a little like I made him up.”

A figment of his imagination. That’s how his father feels in this house. A ghost, or spectre, or story. A front for a reality much more dreadful then his own. Deadly dogs, dead men walking and killer cars.

“You cuh-couldn’t have meh-made any of this up.”

Bill seldom sounds solemn, seldom talks without a grin pulling at his lips. He sounds serious now, though – serious, solemn and sad. Stan caused that sadness tugging at his eyes and clenching his heart.

He wants to tell Bill this, wants to tell him to run as fast as he can, but Bill huffs, abruptly cutting off the words on the tip of his tongue. He throws himself down on the bed which sags beneath in his weight. Stan feels himself shift on the comforter as though his body itself gravitates toward Bill.

“I’m s-suh-sorry,” Bill says again, looking up at the ceiling instead of Stan. “I’m suh-sorry I’ve been suh-such a bad friend. I should’ve come to vuh-visit yuh-you.”

“Why didn’t you?” His voice catches in his throat. He presses his nails against his palm.

Bill sighs and the bed sags. There’s a broken plank in the middle and if he shifted three inches to the right he’d feel it in his back, digging against the skin, pushing against his spinal column. “I wuh- I wanted to. I duh-didn’t think you’d want to see m-me.”

Stan tries to say something but his mouth is dry. Bill roles onto his front, stomach half an inch from the broken plank underneath the mattress and blankets and stifling air of Stan’s room.

“I knew, Stan,” he says bluntly. He’s so close Stan can see the bright way his eyes well with tears and how he bites straight through the dead skin on his lips until spots of red appear. “I knew wha-what he was doing and I didn’t- That day, outside your huh-house…”

(_“Does he huh-hurt you?”_)

“I could – I could have stuh-stopped you,” Bill looks like he’s about to cry, clenching his fists tightly. He’s convinced of his own convictions, so wracked with guilt that he’s beginning to believe the impossible. Boys don’t kill monsters, cars don’t fly and Bill isn’t a superhero – no matter how much Stan wants to believe he is.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“I cuh-cuh-could have. I could’ve fuh-followed y-you huh-home or stood in fruh-front of y-you or called the puh-puh-police or told my dad or duh-done an-anything. I could’ve done anything. I could’ve – I cuh-cuh-could’ve-” A hitching sob cuts Bill’s words short and Stan finds himself pulling at the boy’s shoulders. He wraps his arms tightly around his torso, Bill pressing his face against Stan’s shirt. His cries are snotty and wet against the quickly melting fabric.

Stan pats at his head mechanically at first. It’s been a long time since he’s comforted someone like this. Since the time Ben had slashed his knee open on the lip of a grate they were playing by. Bill feels bulky in his arms and uncomfortable against his chest but he doesn’t let go. Stan holds him tighter.

* * *

All his dreams start with water.

Most of the time he’s submerged in it, engrossed in the way it laps his bare skin, ripples on the surface as he lifts one arm, then another. It feels different in his dreams – a thicker syrupy liquid which weighs at his legs and pulls him down, down and down.

In the dreams where he’s not in the water he finds himself on the edge of it, some embankment at the side of the lake or a river. He strips, too slow for how fast he’s willing himself to go, then pushes his legs in first. The water takes them easily. It drags them down until the water ends at his chin then drags him down further. It gets into his lungs first, fills them as he chokes and gasps and grins at the absence of air.

In dreams, he loves the water. When he wakes and it’s raining he dreams of standing in it, wonders how long it would take the droplets to flood his lungs. There’s something sweet about that feeling in a dream.

Stan stands in front of the water now, wide awake and cautious. He doesn’t want to drown. Doesn’t want to even tempt his body, knowing if he climbs in the desire to swim down will be overwhelming. Richie in on Ben’s shoulders, Eddie on Mike’s, jostling as the water swirls. Bill is their adjudicator, cackling and splashing alongside them. The water is lighter than it is in Stan’s dreams and his fingers itch for it.

He sits on their spot on the embankment instead. Bev is already there, leaning back against her hands, squinting down to where the others are splashing. She smiles at Stan when he shuffles onto the picnic blanket next to her, eyes watering at the brightness of the sun. it’s not even summer yet and it’s already baking.

“Glad you could join us,” Bev’s voice sounds like a smile as she gently wraps one arm around his side in a half-hug. “Thought you were gonna miss your own party.”

“I had to help my mom pack the minivan,” Stan explains. Bev grimaces when he says, like she’s forgotten the party is because he’s leaving, and not because he’s coming back to them. He’s leaving, that’s a certainty now: their things are packed up in his uncle’s van and Stan is enrolled at a new school. He wishes he could forget about it, just for a little while, but he can’t.

Stan looks back down to the water where his friends are. They’re not splashing each other anymore, and Eddie and Mike have disappeared completely from view. A breath holding contest, most likely, like the one’s Stan dreams of each night. Eddie bobs to the surface first, hitting a fist against the water when he realises Mike is still submerged. Mike appears a few seconds later and is pushed under again by Eddie jumping on his shoulders. Bill dives for Richie who swims a few paces from him, water spraying.

“Amateurs,” Bev murmurs under her breath humourlessly. “That was only a minute. I could easily do two. And a half.” She’s only wearing her underwear, body stinging with the heat of the sun. Her feet are flexed like she’s ready to dive in the water, ready to swim and dive and laugh. Her fingers itch for it too. Not like Stan’s though. Never like Stan’s.

“You should show them how it’s done,” Stan tells her. Her face lights up at that, and she’s pushing herself up, already dropping her sunglasses on top of her backpack.

She hesitates in front of Stan, body casting a shadow across his. It feels cool, and once again he itches for the water. “You coming?” she asks, hand cupped over her hands, a precaution for the sun. Stan twitches his head no, and she barrels for the water without asking again.

Stan watches her cannonball into the water and throw herself onto Mike’s shoulders. Richie splashes her and she returns it with shrieking laughter. Bill dips under the water and emerges later, spluttering.

When he can’t see them anymore behind the spraying water, Stan rolls over and tries to sleep.

* * *

He wakes to a clammy hand on his shoulder and the dark edges of a shadow slitting halfway across his face. He rolls onto his back and scrubs at his face, looking up to Ben, who draws his hand back awkwardly and smiles. Stan smiles back, stiff and tired. He hasn’t been sleeping well.

Ben’s body is still gleaming from the water but he’s pulled his jumper back on, which cuts low below his wrists and covers his stomach. Only his legs are still showing as he sits in the space next to Stan. The rocks must be hot but Ben seems to barely notice.

“How’s the water?” Stan asks, craving it. Ben just shrugs. He’s not watching Stan, his eyes still focused on the dip of the quarry below and the way the water ripples against the bodies of their friends. Bev is sat on Mike’s shoulders, and Ben is watching her.

“How’s the water?” Stan asks again, and Ben answers this time, blinking up at him.

“Oh! It’s very wet,” he grins at his own joke. “It’s nice and cold. Eddie pushed me under and I swallowed a whole mouthful. It came out of my nose.”

“Is that even possible?” he asks Ben, but he just shrugs again. He’s still watching Beverly, who is now team jousting with Eddie and Richie – a terrible combination as they can never stop bickering but Stan wasn’t there to divvy up teams like usual. He wants to ask Ben what happened between the two of them, whether prom was ever sorted out or whether Bev is still adamant she’s not going. Prom is next week, after Stan has left for Atlanta. Not that he would be going either. He’s only a Sophomore; his friends are all Juniors.

He doesn’t ask, though, because Bill told him when he visited last week that things are still weird between them. They had been sat cross-legged on Stan’s bed, sorting through the bulk of clothes he had to pack, or choose to send to goodwill. Bill has pulled a face when he said ‘weird’ and it had made Stan laugh, even though nothing was funny. Bill had looked at him, a little affronted, then laughed too, shaking his head. He laughs a lot at the things Stan does when they’re together.

“Must be,” Ben replies. He’s sat cross-legged on the rocks, knee jittering like he can’t stop moving. His legs are slimy and wet from the water. “Are you gonna go in?”

“I didn’t bring any sunscreen,” Stan says, like the only reason he isn’t joining in is his distain of burning. Then, before Ben can offer up any of his, or even suggest walking to the pharmacy for some, Stan says, “I enjoyed the books.”

“You did?” Ben lights up at that, finally looking away from the water. Stan feels a little guilty for lying. He did read the books, but only the first ten pages of each one before his mind had faltered. He had wanted to tell Dr Sylvester that he still can’t concentrate, but he isn’t his doctor anymore. They still haven’t found a doctor in Atlanta yet. “Which was your favourite?”

“The Hobbit,” Stan says. He doesn’t tell Ben it was the only one he had already read. Ben’s smile widens and he starts to prattle about Tolkien and his secret languages and orcs and things Stan can hazily remember from reading the book in Middle School.

Ben is still talking when Stan sees Bill and Beverly approaching them. Their bodies are sheening from the water, hair wet and tangled. Stan half-expects them to shake dry like dogs. Instead Bev reaches for a towel and drapes it around her shoulders, using a hand to lazily scrub her hair dry. Bill doesn’t reach for a towel, standing glistening in the sun, squinting at Stan and half-smiling. Stan smiles back.

“What are you boys talking about?” Bev asks with a faux cheerfulness. There’s an awkwardness in the way she sits down next to Stan – not Ben, like usual – and leans back on the heels of her hands.

“The Hobbit,” Stan says, when it becomes obvious Ben isn’t going to answer. He’s not even looking at her. Stan looks to Bill, who in turn looks back towards the water, sucking his lips to supress a grin. The awkwardness shouldn’t be funny, but it is. Neither Ben and Bev are good at it, Stan realises as Ben’s cheeks flush and Bev starts to hum, filling the silence.

“It’s huh-hot,” Bill notes, shuffling. He’s the only one left standing, Stan wedge like a buffer between Ben and Bev. Stan can’t help but let out a snort which he disguises as a snort. He can feel Bill’s eyes on him.

Ben nods. Bev hums an affirmative. Stan snorts again. They both look to him, Bev frowning so hard her forehead is scored with lines.

“You gun-gunna cuh-cuh-home in, Stan?” Bill asks casually, jerking his head backwards to the water. Stan frowns, and plays with the buttons on his shirt. He had told Bill when this whole plan had been concocted that he wasn’t going to swim. He didn’t say why, but Bill had just nodded and said okay, if that’s what you want Stanley and he had said yes that is what I want Bill and left it at that. Now he’s staring at him, body half tilted to the water, going back on his unspoken promise.

“Coming, Stuh-Stan?” He asks again, eyes flitting between Ben and Bev and oh. Stan gets it. Still, the idea of the water scares him. He can barely even take a bath anymore.

Bill extends his hand out like an olive branch and suddenly Stan’s body aches for the water.

He could tell Bill, if he wanted to. Tell him how the water scares him, how he scares himself, and that if he jumps in he might find himself tethered to the bottom. He could tell him this, and he would nod and understand. Bill would press his lips together in his usual sign of silent agreement and fix Stan with that look, and he would know that he is understood. He could tell them all. Maybe Bev would squeeze his hand and Eddie would cajole him gently until he gets into the water, knowing that’s what he needs to take the leap. Or maybe they would all stay on the embankment with him, until it gets dark and they need to go home – Mike first, and Bill last, walking Stan to the intersection like always.

He could tell them. Tell him. They would understand. But the words are too big, and taking Bill’s hand in his is much easier.

It’s sticky, and sweaty, and Bill can barely hold Stan’s weight as he pulls his body up, but he does. Ben looks at them a little hopelessly as they leave him alone with Bev, but Stan can’t find it in his heart to worry about anything other than Bill, and the water. Stan expects him to let go, but he doesn’t. He holds tighter, locks their fingers tightly and pulls Stan forward. The first steps are stumbling as Stan struggles to regain his balance. They’re walking fast, faster than Stan has walked in months, practically running towards the water.

They’re at the lip of the quarry. Bill doesn’t let go of his hand.

“It seems higher than usual,” Stan’s voice sounds breathless in his own ears.

“It’s nuh-not.”

“It’s been a while, I guess.”

There’s a slight breeze and Stan feels his skin break into goose bumps beneath the collar of the shirt he needs to take off. Bill realises this too, and drops his hand. Stan misses the sticky feeling of their palms stuck together.

Stan strips quickly, folding his clothes out of habit. He can feel Bill watching him carefully, as though he may bolt, or jump without warning, or collapse all together, ground crumbling beneath his feet.

There’s an insecurity that comes with being surveyed which Stan hasn’t felt before. He laces his arm against his bare expanse of torso, arms hot against the coolness of his pale skin. He knows the marks are still there – not bright and angry but muted, like smudged ink against his stomach. Bruises from where they reset the ribs that wouldn’t heal right, and the time he gashed himself open on the bathroom cupboard. Was that after his father left? The summer before?

Bill averts his eyes, out of respect or disgust. Stan has the urge to grab his hands and force his fingers over each and every fading mark. Make him feel the way his bones had fused together after the break, and how the fingers marks around his neck have subdued into ink spots. Maybe if he reached out to do that, his fingers would just lock with Bill’s and they’d be holding hands again. That wouldn’t be so bad.

“Are you pussies coming in or what?” Eddie shouts from below, then squeals when Richie grabs him by the shoulders and drags him underwater. Stan peers down the distance, suddenly regretting his decision. He could go back and sit on the embankment with Bev and Ben he thinks, but when he glances back he sees that the two of them have disappeared into the hedgerow.

Bill nudges him with his elbow, not hard but not exactly gentle either. Stan doesn’t want to hold Bill’s hand anymore. He wants to wrestle him to the ground and roll around and shriek like Richie and Bill used to in middle school. Stan tried wrestling once. The mud got stuck in his hair and made him cry.

“You can guh-go suh-sit down if you wuh-want,” Bill says gently. Then, eyes glinting, he adds, “Duh-does make you a pussy the-though.”

“Fuck you,” Stan returns, spluttering out a laugh. He shoves Bill harshly, making him stumble. Bill shoves him back, and Stan jumps first.

And when he lands, he doesn’t hit the bottom.

* * *

“Whu-what happens neh-neh-next?”

It’s not what he expects Bill to say. Stan looks over to him, cast in the half-light from the window in a house opposite. His hair is frizzy from where he’s scrubbed it dry with a towel and his shirt clings to his wet torso. The dim light makes his skin glow, tanned from the time spent outside as summer quickly approaches yet again. It’s not too late, seven, half seven maybe, but the streets are quiet and hot as the two of them walk. Bill had insisted on walking him home, even though his turning was a few streets back. He won’t say why.

“What do you mean?” He asks Bill, who looks sombre suddenly. It had been a pleasant afternoon, and if Stan hadnt thought too hard he didn’t think about the fact that it may be the last pleasant aftertoon he ever spent with his friends.

The last time Eddie had sat on his shoulders in the waist deep water. The last time Mike had hauled a cool box down and offered out quickly melting popsicles. The last hug from Bev, the last time Richie would jab his sides sharply and Stan would pretend to be annoyed.

The last walk home with Bill.

His frown deepens, like Bill too is just remembering that Stan leaves for Georgia in less than a week. “Wuh- wuh- hat happens ah-after I walk yuh-you ho-home? Ah-after you get in that car and druh-druh-drive 1306 muh-miles away?”

“You looked up how many miles it is to Atlanta?” Stan says with a small laugh, but Bill says nothing. He scuffs his shoes against the asphalt instead.

A car trundles past slowly, engine chugging steadily on. It passes them, then rounds the corner. There is a second where Stan thinks it’s going to expire is a cloud of fumes and stall halfway around the bend. It pulls through, though, and makes the turn.

Bill turns towards him, walking backwards down the street. “Wruh-write me a-an epilogue.”

“What?” It’s the last thing Stan expects him to say. At first he thinks it’s a joke – an odd one, judging by the serious way Bill says it. He doesn’t laugh at it though.

“Pruh-petend this is the eh-end of a stuh-story. Wruh-write me an eh-eh-epilogue. A ‘whuh-what happens next’.” Bill says it like he believes in it. Like he believes in the conviction of happy endings.

“Isn’t writing your thing?” Stan deflects, but it doesn’t work because Bill steps in front of him and cuts off his path. It’s not big, or scary, or intimidating for him to be crowding in Stan’s spaces. It’s just Bill, who’s pouting and who’s hair is starting to dry at the ends and who used to hold his hand when they crossed a road.

Stan wishes he’d hold his hand now and march him across the road safely. He’s not very good doing it on his own.

“Puh-please, Stanley,” Bill pleads and Stan feels his face crack into a smile. Bill grins too, and moves out of his way, still taking his steps backwards.

“So…” Bill starts casually. He misses a step, stumbles, then regains his balance and keeps walking. “Whuh-what hu-happens to me ah-ah-after you druh-drive away?”

“Do you mean straight after the car drives away? Or a day later? A year later? Ten years later?”

Bill seems to think on this a little, then says, “Struh-straight ah-away.” He pauses again, unsure. “Later – Buh-both.”

“After the car drives away, you’ll probably go home and do the school work I know you’ve be ignoring.

“Buh-boring start, but pruh-promising direction,” Bill nods thoughtfully, like Stan used to do when he would suggest games for the two of them to play. Bill always favoured pirates, but Stan liked to play house, so Bill always relented and played house with him. That was until Bill met Richie and Eddie at school. From then on their games were always dictated by who could shout the loudest (Richie) and they usually ended up playing some jungle trek game. Not that Stan minded. He could still play house with Bill in private.

“And then Richie will call round,” Stan continues. “Because he likes to do that on a Saturday and the two of you will spend the day playing on your Atari. Then maybe he’ll stay over, or you’ll go to see Mike, or Eddie – not Bev and Ben, though, they’ll be too busy being disgusting and in love.”

They’d made up this afternoon after lots of careful situation management from Bill and Mike – apparently they’d been planning to use the party to force the two back together for the past few weeks. They’re going to prom together now. They’re all going to go to prom together, all six of them. Stan will be in Georgia by that point.

“You’ll be fine, Bill,” Stan adds after looking at Bill’s unsure face. He will be fine. His life won’t change that much without Stan in it. His foundations aren’t shifting. “I know for sure that you’ll be fine, and happy.”

“Yuh-you’ve got it all puh-planned out.”

“You know me.”

“What about a yuh-year later? What hu-happens to me in a yuh-yuh-year?”

“Oh, that’s easy. In a year you’ll be a NYU like you always planned, and you’ll have this amazing new little group of friends, and a really pretty girlfriend – I mean, really pretty – who is so in love with you.”

“Oh yeah?” Bill raises an eyebrow, and Stan pushes back the sad laughter in his throat.

“Yeah. And you’ll be studying something boring like poli-sci or economics, but in your spare time you’ll be writing a novel and your girlfriend will be your biggest fan, and her dad will also happen to be a book publisher. And he’ll read the works of this new Arthur Miller type and fall in love with you too, and your writing and he’ll just have to publish it.”

He feels breathless when he’s finished. He didn’t even know where it was going when he started, but now that its out there, Stan realises he’s always known what Bill’s future was going to look like. He knows what happens to boys like Bill, boys with the beautiful smiles and the easy charm and the sadness in their souls. And he knows there’s not much room for him in this vision of Bill’s future.

“Juh-just like that?” Bill asks, stopping in the middle of the street.

“Just like that,” Stan replies.

“I don’t know Stuh-stan. It sounds really nuh-nuh-nice. I just don’t know if it’s the ruh-right ending.”

“Why not?”

Bill scuffs his sneaker again. It makes a pathetic squeaking sound. Bill watches the dark scuff marks the sidewalk makes on the white tip of his sneaker. He doesn’t look at Stan.

“I duh-don’t know about the wruh-writing thing anymore. I haven’t wruh-written anything in muh-months. My breh-brain feels like it’s all blocked uh-up.”

“Then unblock it,” Stan says, like it’s simple. It has to be simple. He’s sick of things being hard. He wants things to be easy, and kind, and beautiful. If not for him, then for Bill.

He starts walking again, turning round and thrusting his hands deep into his shorts pockets. Stan follows a little behind, watching the way his shirt clings to his wet torso, and how the back of his neck is slightly burnt and reddening as the air cools.

“I used to see the feh-future like that too,” Bill says suddenly. He doesn’t stop walking. He doesn’t look at Stan. “So cluh-clearly. I used to know exactly what I was duh-duh-doing, and where I was guh-oing.”

Stan quickens his steps until they’re shoulder to shoulder. “And now you don’t?”

“Do yuh-you?” Bill looks up to meet his eyes, as though challenging him. This close up Stan can see that there is sunburn on the tip of his nose too, red raw and peeling.

“Sometimes.” Stan says. The truth is, he doesn’t. Not so much anymore, really. It’s all hazier to him now.

“Nuh-now, it’s like - It’s like each the-ime something chu-changes, I ch-change. When Juh-Juh-Juh – whuh-uh-wheh – when we luh-lost him I fuh-felt so lost, like my luh-luh-life was a truh-train that had beh-been derailed, or puh-pushed to another puh-ath. I feel like that nuh-now. With yuh-you… leaving.”

“I’m moving to Georgia. I’m not dying, and it doesn’t mean I’m not going to be your friend anymore,” he insists, but Bill is barely even listening. Stan can practically hear his mind reeling in the gaps between their speech.

“My dad says gruh-growing up sharpens yuh-you,” Bill says finally. “Refines your muh-mind or wha-whatever. If anything muh-mine seems to be guh-getting fuzzier. It’s like T.V. static when the fuh-fork gets stuh-stuh-uck in a ruh-rainstorm.”

“How can you not be a writer, with words like that?”

He laughs then, an empty and vacuous laugh. “I duh-don’t know. I guh-guess in all the eh-epilogues where I suh-suh-saw myself as a wruh-writer yuh-you were there tuh-oo. You could’ve duh-died. I let yuh-you go into that huh-house. I knew whuh-whuh-what he was duh-doing ad I let yuh-you go into that huh-house. Huh-how fucked up is tha-that? He could’ve kuh-kuh-kiilled you and I didn’t tuh-tell anyone.”

“I didn’t die. I’m here, right now, see,” Stan protests again, like it matters, like Bill isn’t right. Something died with the summer. Some part of him he had retained for so long that has now slipped through his grasp. He feels that Bill feels this too.

“Not for much luh-longer. I’m not guh-gunna be a wruh-writer and you’re guh-guh-gunna be in Atlanta. I luh-loved your epilogue, Stuh-stanley, but the reality is muh-much shittier,” Bill stops walking again, so suddenly that Stan takes a few more strides before slowing. In this light he can see the hard resolute set of Bill’s mouth with it’s slight downturn and the tension in his neck. Stan wonders if he put his hands on the tendons whether he could smooth them back into skin. Bill tilts his chin upwards, blinking in quick succession like he’s clearing tears from his eyes. Stan knows, he knows, that he should be crying too, but the tears don’t come. Instead he feels like he’s dropping through the floor – the climax of a rollercoaster with no adrenaline in the pity of his stomach.

“That’s not true,” he insists. He wants to close the gap between himself and Bill but he’s scared that by pushing forward he’ll drive Bill back. “You don’t know what happens next, no one does. We won’t know what will happen after the car drives away until I get in the car. The story has to end first. Then we’ll focus on the epilogue.”

Bill blinks again. Then he closes the gap and throws his arms around Stan’s neck. The grip is tight and almost suffocating but it’s okay because he can feel the reassuring labour of Bill’s breath, hot against the side of his face. Stan lifts his arms hesitantly and wraps them around the other boy’s waist, squeezing back tightly. There’s a sniffling sound close to his ear and cautiously he strokes a hand up Bill’s back. He tries to say something, but when he opens his mouth he’s surprised instead by an escaping sob. It feels like dry heaving with the velocity in which it launches itself from his mouth. Another quickly precedes, and another, and another, until he’s shaking in Bill’s arms, the other boy being the own barrier between himself and the floor once his knees give way.

He feels a hand in his hair – it doesn’t fist, or pull, but instead cards gently through his curls. Then, a hot, heavy voice in his ear, clearer then the sobs or the thoughts or Him. “I duh-don’t think I want the stuh-story to end.”

* * *

“What about me, Bill? What do you think my epilogue will look like?”

He’s stood on his porch, pooled in the dim yellow light. Behind him a curtain twitches – his mother will be out soon to fuss about him catching a cold. Now, however, he’s content to just look at Bill, whose hands are thrust deep into his short pockets and whose legs are scored with bruises from wrestling.

Bill peers around the deserted street, eyes squinted thoughtfully. Stan had only meant it as a joke but now he feels self-conscious as Bill glances back to him, carefully and meditatively. He looks older in the dimming light, shorts slightly too short for his legs, t-shirt tight around his arms. This is how Stan will remember him, he thinks. He’ll remember Bill like this, skin tanned from the first weeks of summer, smiling but thoughtful, staring at Stan. Always staring at Stan, like he knew some secret he didn’t, some deep soul crushing thing about Stan that he doesn’t even know about himself yet. He can’t wait to find it out.

“Suh-something better than this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu @ muppetstiefel on tumblr <3

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!!
> 
> This was completely just something I wanted to write, and decided to publish because I worked so hard. I'm pretty sure it's a complete AU, but I don't really know aha
> 
> If you are waiting for the next chapter in the Roots series, I promise it is coming!! I've been very ill this week but I am excited to continue this story!!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this. I really debated whether or not to post, but I decided to just go for it.


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